Pricey ‘experts’

Texas AG should stop paying anti-abortion activists for testifying in federal court.

Reasonable Texans can disagree on abortion policy. But generally, we agree that government should be free of waste, incompetence and anything smelling of financial shenanigans.

So, the revelation that a statewide elected official helped dole out hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to unqualified consultants is cause for concern. The fact that the elected official is already under indictment for security’s fraud is cause for alarm.

Ken Paxton really ought to know better. After all, he’s Texas attorney general. He should understand not only the letter of the law, but also its spirit. Instead, we discover that the AG’s office has been funneling public funds to a network of anti-abortion rights activists by casting them as “expert witnesses” with the qualifications to defend the state’s tough abortion restrictions in federal court. Our tax money has enriched these so-called “experts” for offering testimony that’s done little or nothing to help the state win its cases. Judges have repeatedly seen through the ruse and rejected their input as irrelevant, but this inside job is cheating taxpayers and needs to stop.

Alejandra Matos in the Chronicle’s Austin bureau followed the money and discovered the AG’s office has paid $500,000 to 21 supposedly “expert” witnesses to testify on abortion laws and regulations enacted since 2013. Judges ignored the testimony from a half-dozen of those witnesses and, according to their rulings and what they said in court, the jurists gave little or no weight to any of the others.

Testimony was dismissed because the state’s “experts” lacked medical or scientific credentials, because they didn’t know enough about the law, or because they were just expressing their opinions. Federal judges hearing these cases indicated they thought the attorney general’s office didn’t heed the difference between an expert witness — who’s supposed to offer relevant facts — and an advocate who simply spouts personal viewpoints.

For example, our state government paid $92,000 to a law professor who runs a boot camp for “pro-life” activists. A marriage therapist’s testimony about the psychological effects of abortions was tossed out because the judge thought the witness lacked “academic qualifications and scientific credentials.” In another case, a philosophy professor testified that health providers should pay to bury or cremate aborted fetuses because it’s beneficial to society, leading a federal judge to blast the state for calling an irrelevant witness. Paid $4,300, the professor admitted he hadn’t read the state’s rule on disposal of fetal remains because he found it “very complicated to read.”

“He has no credibility with me whatsoever,” U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks, a senior jurist appointed by President George H. W. Bush, told the attorney general’s office during the trial. “He didn’t have any substantive knowledge at all about this case. He’s just giving an opinion.”

A spokesman for Paxton defended the witnesses as esteemed and qualified. He said the state also called upon experts who support abortion rights, although nothing said in court indicated that. But the judges hearing those cases — the only audience that counts — apparently weren’t impressed with the expensive testimony offered up by the anti-abortion activists mascarading as experts.

At best, Paxton and his predecessor Greg Abbott wasted a half-million in taxpayer dollars on unqualified witnesses who did nothing to advance the state’s case, and may have harmed its credibility. That should anger abortion foes, who surely believe their views deserve effective representation. At worst, the Republican attorneys general used this litigation as a pretext to divert taxpayer funds to a bunch of anti-abortion propagandists friendly to a partisan cause.

There’s also the chance the activists were the best Texas could get to prop up harmful policies that no qualified expert would defend. In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down laws blamed for closing half the abortion clinics in Texas.

State lawmakers need to investigate these payments and consider whether to require certain standards of expert witnesses used by the attorney general. This isn’t about abortion; it’s about our state government wasting taxpayer money. That’s always a losing proposition.