A Texas State Bar complaint against Attorney General Ken Paxton is moving forward and will be heard by either a district court judge or an administrative panel, the complainants said Tuesday.

The complaint was filed in July 2021 by the nonprofit Lawyers Defending American Democracy and 16 Texas lawyers, including four former presidents of the state Bar. It alleges that Paxton committed professional misconduct when he filed the December 2020 suit before the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to overturn the presidential election results in four battleground states. The complainants say the suit was frivolous, knowingly false and deceitful....

“This is a big step because this rarely happens,” said Jim Harrington, one of the Texas lawyers who joined the complaint and a retired founder of the Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit that advocates for voting rights. “I just know from being a lawyer for 50 years, this is very rare.”......

Under the disciplinary rules, Paxton now has 20 days to decide whether to request the case be heard by a district court, where proceedings are public, or by an evidentiary panel. If he chooses the evidentiary panel, the proceedings will be kept private unless public sanctions are imposed. Dismissals or private sanctions are not made public.