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

A Texas transgender rights organization has filed a petition in state court seeking to uncover who is behind an impersonation campaign it says has reached thousands of Texas residents ahead of the November 3 general election.

The Transgender Education Network of Texas, known as TENT, says an unknown party has distributed mailers and text messages falsely claiming to represent the organization to residents across the state. Some contain inflammatory messages that TENT says it neither created nor authorized.

TENT announced during a Thursday afternoon press briefing that it had filed a petition in Travis County court. Mimi Marziani, an attorney representing TENT, said the impersonation campaign has had a staggering impact.

“This incident has led to extraordinary damage to TENT as an organization, and also to threats that continue to come in against TENT staff,” Marziani told reporters during a Zoom call.

Marziani said TENT filed a petition under Rule 202 of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure. The rule lets parties seek court authorization to conduct depositions before formally filing a lawsuit, which could help them identify those responsible and assess possible legal claims.

“It is our belief, based on the content and timing of the messages and mailer, that it is a single, coordinated campaign and it is organized by a single entity or a single payer,” Marziani said.

Related: Ahead of elections in hostile Texas, someone is impersonating trans advocates — by text and now by mail

Inflammatory mailers target Republican households ahead of election

The general election is less than two weeks away, with Texas facing an unusually large number of competitive races, according to the Texas Tribune. Transgender rights have become a flashpoint in national and state politics, leading TENT to suspect the impersonation campaign is politically motivated, Marziani said.

Marziani said the materials were inflammatory and misrepresented TENT’s work. “Obviously, these were sent to correspond with the early voting period in Texas,” she said.

Some mailings were addressed to children in particular households, and pamphlets purportedly offered young people advice on sensitive topics, including seeking emancipation from their parents and traveling out of state for gender-affirming care, Marziani said. She added that TENT believes the mail campaign primarily targeted Republican households.

“The collateral damage here are the privacy rights of Texas voters and the First Amendment rights of TENT itself,” she said.

Related: Texas trans rights group says text message impersonation campaign sparked hate

A mysterious Wyoming company and questions about who is paying

Despite the uproar the campaign has caused, the identity of those responsible remains unknown. Marziani said whoever is behind the operation appears to have deliberately concealed their identity.

Marziani said the mailers carried a return address resembling TENT’s and identified a group called the Texas Transgender Student Union as the sender. The group registered as a limited liability company in Wyoming on September 2, according to a business filing The Advocate obtained through the Wyoming secretary of state’s business portal.

The Texas Transgender Student Union is registered to an address in Sheridan, Wyoming, that serves as a “registered agent address for companies across the country,” according to Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA.

Such arrangements are legal in Wyoming but can make it difficult to determine who owns or operates a company and where it actually conducts business, as Texas Observer correspondent Steven Monacelli has reported. The Wyoming Tribune Eagle has also reported that the address has been linked to scams involving out-of-state businesses.

Marziani said TENT hopes the petition will help identify whoever is orchestrating the campaign. “This is about very dirty, unethical tricks in an election,” she said. “It is about anonymous dark money.”

TENT takes legal action against companies linked to the campaign

During Thursday’s call, Marziani also outlined additional legal steps TENT has taken involving companies it believes may have helped facilitate the operation.

Marziani said TENT sent a cease-and-desist letter to SnailWorks on Thursday, a Maryland-based direct mail company TENT suspects played a role in distributing the mailers. The organization had not yet received a response, Marziani said, and does not know how many mailers were sent.

Last week, TENT sent a cease-and-desist letter to Infobip, a communications company it said controlled the phone numbers used in the text message campaign. Marziani said the company agreed to block the numbers from sending additional messages but declined to identify the account holders associated with them.

The Advocate contacted Infobip and SnailWorks for comment following Thursday’s briefing. Neither company immediately responded.

Threats and harassment force transgender organization to suspend operations

TENT is a transgender advocacy organization that provides educational resources, community programming, and political advocacy for LGBTQ+ Texans. Since the impersonation campaign began, the organization says it has taken its online resource center offline and suspended events, including a statewide voter engagement campaign that had been planned for months.

TENT staff members have also faced a wave of online harassment and threats, according to Marziani. She said the continuing harm underscores the urgency of identifying those responsible.

“We do believe our client has a number of claims, potentially against three actors under state and federal law,” Marziani said. “We would like to figure out the identity of who’s responsible during this election period.”