A Texas appeals court just ruled that the state had no business shutting down midwife Maria Rojas' clinics in the first place. Her lawyer's response? Great news. Also, it doesn't matter at all. The clinics are gone, Rojas is under house arrest, and Ken Paxton is already planning his next move.
The Court Said the State Had Nothing. The State Did It Anyway.
The 15th Court of Appeals reversed the injunction against Rojas on Thursday, finding, in plain terms, that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office never had the evidence to justify shutting her down in the first place. The court's memorandum opinion stated that the trial court improperly admitted probable-cause affidavits from a separate criminal case and that the remaining evidence was, quote, "insufficient to reasonably support the existence of a probable right of recovery."
Translation: they used evidence from one case to blow up her life in another case, and it shouldn't have worked, and it did anyway, and now a higher court has said as much. Rojas' attorney Jenna Hudson, with the Center for Reproductive Rights, put it plainly to CBS News: "The ruling this morning confirmed that the state presented no evidence that Ms. Rojas has done anything wrong."
Rojas has pleaded not guilty to all charges. She is the first person sued under the Texas Human Life Protection Act, which bans abortions after six weeks. That distinction alone tells you everything about how the state of Texas has chosen to deploy this law.
Winning in Court, Losing Everything Else
Here is what winning looks like in Ken Paxton's Texas. The injunction gets reversed. The higher court says the state overreached. Your attorney declares victory on the courthouse steps. And your three Houston-area clinics are still shuttered, your career is still in ruins, and you are still confined to your house.
Hudson told CBS News that "the damage is done." Rojas owned and operated Clinica Waller Latinoamericana in Waller, Clinica Latinoamericana Telge in Cypress, and Latinoamericana Medical Clinic in Spring. All three are closed. And even with the injunction struck down, Rojas cannot reopen them because, as Hudson explained, the terms of her bond bar her from going near the clinic locations.
"She just doesn't have a career anymore," Hudson said. "She trained to be a midwife, for decades as a midwife, and as a result of the criminal charges against her and the civil case that we're talking about here today, she can't practice as a midwife anymore." Decades of professional experience, a client base of women who relied on her care, multiple operating clinics. All of it gone. And the state of Texas has not proven she did anything criminal.
Paxton Is Not Done With Her
If you thought a loss in the appeals court might slow Ken Paxton down, you have not been paying attention to Ken Paxton. His office told CBS News on Thursday that he intends to petition the Texas Supreme Court for review, which in Texas is about as reliable a rubber stamp as you can find for exactly this kind of case.
His office released a statement calling Rojas' practice an "illegal abortion scheme" and claiming her advice led to "vulnerable women aborting their babies." That language is doing a lot of work. It is written for a press release, not a court filing, which makes sense given that the court just said the evidence did not hold up. The criminal case against Rojas is still pending, and no trial date has been set.
Rojas' criminal defense attorney Nicole Hochglaube told CBS News her client is "hanging in there" despite being unable to work, and that the entire process has been extremely difficult. That is the human reality behind the legal scoreboard: a woman on house arrest, unable to do the work she has done for decades, waiting for a trial that has not even been scheduled yet.
What This Case Actually Represents
Maria Rojas is not just a defendant in a Texas courtroom. She is a test case. Paxton's office went after her first, under the Texas Human Life Protection Act, precisely to establish what this law can do and how far it can reach. The fact that a court just said the evidence was insufficient has not seemed to dampen anyone's enthusiasm in the AG's office.
The 15th Court of Appeals decision sends the civil case back to the trial court, where state attorneys could theoretically try again with a new temporary restraining order. So the legal mechanism that already destroyed Rojas' career could be rewound and run a second time, with a stronger evidentiary foundation. That is what "victory" looks like in this case: the right to start the clock over on someone whose clinics are already closed.
For the communities those clinics served, the math is simple and brutal. Rojas operated in Waller, Cypress, and Spring, areas where Spanish-speaking women in particular relied on her care. Those patients do not get their provider back because an appeals court issued a favorable ruling. They have already found other arrangements or gone without.
The Dingo Take
Let's be honest about what happened here. The state of Texas used an emergency injunction backed by improperly admitted evidence to destroy a woman's career before she ever had a trial. A higher court looked at that and said the evidence wasn't there. And the response from the Attorney General's office was to announce an appeal while reissuing the same press release language about protecting vulnerable women. If Ken Paxton were actually interested in protecting vulnerable women, he might consider what happened to all the patients who depended on the three clinics he helped shut down.
The through-line in this case is not justice. It is deterrence. You do not need to win in court to make an example out of someone. You just need to make the process painful enough that anyone watching decides it is not worth the risk. Rojas' career is over regardless of how the criminal case resolves. That outcome was achieved months ago, with an injunction a higher court just called improperly granted. Mission accomplished, apparently.
Paxton is heading to the Texas Supreme Court, which he will almost certainly find more receptive. The criminal case grinds on with no trial date in sight. And Maria Rojas sits in her house, unable to practice the profession she spent decades building, waiting to find out what the state of Texas decides to do with her next. This is the enforcement mechanism the anti-abortion movement built. It is working exactly as designed.
