Texas Supreme Court halts questioning over who’s behind fake trans advocacy mailers to families

The Texas Supreme Court has halted a deposition aimed at exposing who is behind political mailers smearing a transgender advocacy group.

The state high court paused the questioning ordered by a lower court judge just 15 minutes before it was scheduled to begin, delaying an effort to uncover who produced and financed the mailers.

Beginning on October 17, mailers from the Wyoming-based Texas Transgender Student Union addressed to “students” began arriving in mailboxes across Texas. Presented as guides for transgender students, they featured merchandise promoting the Transgender Education Network of Texas. TENT subsequently received an onslaught of complaints about the guides despite having no role in producing them.

Related: Judge clears path for trans rights group to uncover who’s behind fake mailers to Texas families

The recently formed Texas Transgender Student Union is identified in disclaimers as the source of the mailers and challenged Travis County District Judge Jan Soifer’s order requiring depositions. Attorneys for the organization said the order would violate the group’s First Amendment right to speak anonymously. In a court filing, they also said the group “has no plans to engage in any more communications like those at issue here.”

The Texas Transgender Student Union filed a petition and a motion for temporary relief to prevent the depositions. The Texas Supreme Court granted the temporary relief, putting the questioning on hold.

Related: Who sent fake transgender advocacy texts in Texas? Court records name GOP women’s group

The Wyoming group is represented by Chris Hilton, a former attorney in Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office who also served on Paxton’s impeachment defense team. The mailers arrived days ahead of a critical midterm election in which Paxton is running for U.S. Senate and trailing Democrat James Talarico in polls.

Mimi Marziani, an attorney for TENT, told CBS News the mailers appear to be politically motivated.

"It's clear to me that this was a false flag operation by right-wing operatives," Marziani said. She also said the group behind the mailers was "willing to break laws and hurt a lot of people in pursuit of their political goals."

Related: Texas trans rights group asks court to expose who’s sending fake flyers to outrage conservatives

TENT estimates that between 3.6 million and 4.2 million mailers were sent to households across Texas, with most apparently going to registered Republicans.

Separately, Soifer ordered a deposition last week about similar text messages that listed TENT’s internet domain. Infobip, a communications company whose platform was used to send the texts, said in the deposition that the clients behind the messages included John Braun and the Republican Women’s Caucus Fund. The fund denied any involvement and threatened legal action.

It is unclear whether the text messages and mailers are related.