On October 23, 2026, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman in Collin County district court. The 67-page original petition names OpenAI Global, LLC, OpenAI Foundation (formerly OpenAI, Inc.), OpenAI OpCo, LLC, OpenAI Group PBC, OpenAI Holdings, LLC, OpenAI, LLC and Altman personally. It brings claims under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act (DTPA) and the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act, the 2023 Texas law on minors’ data and parental controls.
The petition alleges that OpenAI deceived Texans about ChatGPT’s safety, accuracy and reliability and failed to warn of its dangers. The attorney general’s release says the chatbot has aided mass shooters, encouraged vulnerable people toward suicide, and led minors to become addicted to “a tool that fakes human compassion to collect their data with no parental oversight”. Under the SCOPE Act, Texas alleges that OpenAI does not give verified parents the tools the law requires, such as controls over sharing of a minor’s personal data and targeted advertising.
The relief sought is unusually broad. The prayer asks the court to enjoin OpenAI from, among other things, offering ChatGPT to minors in Texas, operating without adequate age verification, and “releasing any new artificial intelligence model to Texas users unless an independent third-party evaluator, approved by the Court, has reviewed its safety guardrails and approved its release”. It also seeks civil penalties of $10,000 per DTPA violation, disgorgement, fees and a jury trial; the petition states Texas seeks monetary relief over $1,000,000.
Why it matters: Texas follows the coordinated suits filed by other state attorneys general on October 14, but goes further in two ways: it names Altman personally, and it asks a state court to make a court-approved evaluator a gate on every new OpenAI model released to Texas users. That would turn a consumer protection case into a de facto pre-release review regime for one company in one state.
What it does not show: this is a petition, and its contents are allegations. No court has ruled on any claim or on the requested injunction. The petition’s account of harms relies heavily on press reports and other lawsuits rather than findings.