Jesus, this was an epic bitchslap to Paxton from the (normally friendly) SCOTX: https://www.txcourts.gov/media/1459231/240813c.pdf
 
	The opinion opens with this absolute banger:
 
	Remarkably, the State’s presentation to this Court takes no 
	position on whether the State Fair of Texas, a private entity, has the 
	legal authority to exclude patrons carrying handguns from the Fair. 
	This may surprise many observers, given that the ostensible purpose of 
	this litigation is to determine whether Texas law entitles law-abiding 
	Texans to carry handguns at the State Fair despite the Fair’s recently 
	enacted policy to the contrary. That is a very important question. It is 
	a question on which both law-abiding handgun owners and the operators 
	of the State Fair deserve a clear answer. It is a question to which further 
	litigation may provide a clearer answer. But it is not a question 
	answered—or even addressed—by the State’s emergency filings in this 
	Court. This Court cannot possibly order the State Fair to allow 
	handguns to be carried at this year’s Fair when the party seeking that 
	relief does not even argue that Texas law obligates the Fair to do so.
 
	Then, they follow it up with this:
 
	The State Fair of Texas is a private entity that operates the Fair 
	on public land leased from the City of Dallas. Whether Texans have a 
	legal right to carry handguns at a mass public event of this nature is not 
	a question that should ever be in doubt. Law-abiding handgun owners 
	in Texas know that there are certain places where they may not carry 
	their weapon. They need to know—with maximum clarity—whether the 
	State Fair is one of those places. Yet the State’s filings do not even 
	attempt to answer that question. Instead of arguing that the State Fair 
	lacks the authority to prohibit guns at the Fair, the State instead argues 
	that the City of Dallas may not promote or enforce the State Fair’s 
	prohibition on guns. Assume the State is correct. Assume that section 
	411.209(a) of the Government Code prohibits the City of Dallas from 
	assisting in the enforcement of, or associating itself in any way with, the 
	State Fair’s gun policy. Even if that is true—and it may well be—this 
	would not mean that handgun owners are entitled by law to carry their 
	weapons at the State Fair despite the State Fair’s contrary policy. On 
	that pivotal question, the State’s filings are conspicuously silent.1
 
	And then this footnote (and if you ever practice appellate law, you know that the footnotes are usually where the sickest burns live) was slid in there:
 
	1 The State contends that the Fair’s gun policy would be unenforceable 
	if the City’s police department is prohibited from enforcing it. That is obviously 
	wrong. The Fair intends to hire private security, and the Dallas County 
	District Attorney is not a party to this case. Perhaps the worst possible 
	outcome from all of this would be a court order that sides with the State but 
	actually only enjoins the City of Dallas and its police department based on 
	section 411.209, which is the kind of order for which much of the State’s 
	briefing seems to advocate. That order would leave the State Fair’s gun policy 
	in place—and expose those who violate it to potential liability at the hands of 
	local government officials who do not work for the City—while giving the
 
	law-abiding, gun-carrying public the misimpression that the courts have 
	green-lighted their carriage of handguns at the Fair. To the extent the State 
	advocates for such an ill-conceived half-measure, it does so unadvisedly.
 
	Next, the Opinion points out that Paxton has had an AG opinion since 2016 that contradicted his argument in this case:
 
	An Attorney General Opinion issued in 2016 was not so silent. It 
	concluded that private parties leasing government-owned facilities 
	cannot make carriage of handguns on their leased property a crime by 
	posting the familiar signage described by sections 30.06 and 30.07 of the 
	Penal Code. Tex. Att’y Gen. Op. KP-0108, at 3 (2016). The AG Opinion 
	went on, however, to address a key question that is entirely unaddressed 
	by the State’s filings—whether private parties leasing government 
	property can exclude carriers of handguns by invoking the traditional 
	authority of a tenant to control entry to the property and to exclude 
	non-compliant visitors as trespassers. The Opinion concluded that a 
	private party in such a position likely could prohibit guns in this way 
	under Texas law. Id. at 3 n.2.
 
	 
	AG Opinion KP-0108 was recently withdrawn pending 
	consideration of a related opinion request, RQ-0558-KP. But 
	withdrawing the Opinion is not the same thing as repudiating its 
	analysis or explaining why it was wrong, which the State has not 
	attempted to do in this Court. If the AG Opinion was correct about the 
	common-law authority of private parties who lease public property, then 
	the privately operated State Fair may well have the authority to exclude 
	handguns from the Fair, and this is the case even if the State is 
	completely right about the City of Dallas’s obligations under section 
	411.209. If the AG Opinion was wrong, then surely the party seeking a 
	result at odds with its own publicly stated opinion must at least explain 
	why its opinion was wrong.
 
	Finally, after going over some other issues with the shitty reasoning and lack of support in the motion for emergency relief that the State filed, the Opinion closes with this:
 
	It should go without saying—though 
	perhaps it cannot be said often enough—that a judge’s role in this case 
	is not to decide whether the State Fair made a wise decision. Our job, 
	instead, is to decide whether Texas law allowed the State Fair to make 
	the decision for itself. The State declines to take a position on that 
	essential question but nevertheless asks this Court for an injunction 
	overriding the State Fair’s decision. It should also go without saying 
	that our answer, for now, must be no.
 
	All of the italics in my quotes are from the Court itself, not from me. Here's some inside baseball: Courts italicize in the opinions to emphasize ridiculous takes by the appellant or appellee. In this case, the Court's Opinion is emphasizing just how shitty and devoid of reasoning the State's motion was. 
 
	If I ever received an opinion in a case I was involved with, I'd probably voluntarily resign my law license. It's that bad. Paxton, on the other hand, just released a statement that said, essentially "The Supreme Court is wrong."