Aaron Reitz

• Led the Texas Attorney General’s efforts to undermine the Biden administration, including by challenging agency guidance protecting access to medication abortion.
• Vocal anti-abortion advocate who is “unequivocally pro-life” and believes that “human life starts at conception, no exceptions.”
• Connected to extreme anti-abortion organizations, including having served as a fellow for the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Reitz served as Texas’ Deputy Attorney General for Legal Strategy from November 2020 to May 2023. During Reitz’s tenure, the Texas Attorney General was involved in multiple cases related to the state’s abortion bans and restrictions—including the Center for Reproductive Rights’ challenge to a 1925 law prohibiting all abortions in Texas. 

• Although Reitz was not a named attorney in these cases, he was nicknamed the “Offensive Coordinator” for the office’s litigation against the Biden administration, helping the Texas Attorney General to sue the Biden administration nearly 50 times, including in efforts to curtail medication abortion access.
• Reitz also cosigned the Office of the Attorney General’s official Opinion No. KP-0401 classifying gender-affirming care as “child abuse” under Texas law.

Reitz served as Chief of Staff for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) beginning in May 2023, overseeing the Senator’s domestic policy, legislative, communications, and administrative teams as well as staff for the Senate Commerce, Judiciary, and Foreign Relations Committees and a dozen regional offices throughout Texas. 

• During this time, Sen. Cruz introduced S. 4368, a bill purporting to protect in vitro fertilization (IVF). In reality, the legislation would not meaningfully protect access to IVF, and would have allowed states to implement laws and policies undermining the standard of care for IVF. 
• S. 4368 appeared to be designed to distract from attempts to advance S. 4445, the Right to IVF Act, which would have codified a nationwide right for individuals to receive, and providers to provide, IVF care free from medically unnecessary restrictions; required insurance plans to cover IVF; provided important protections against discrimination; and expanded access to IVF services for servicemembers, veterans, and federal employees.

Used false and inflammatory rhetoric about abortion, such as:

• In a video blog recorded at the Texas Alliance for Life Annual Gala, Reitz reaffirmed his belief that “human life starts at conception, no exceptions.”
  • He also promised, “If you elect me to the state legislature, I will always support the pro-life cause. I will always oppose any legislation that doesn’t recognize the newly conceived child as fully human deserving of all of the legal protections that you and I enjoy […]. If you’re looking for a candidate who is unequivocally pro-life, who’s got the backbone to fight the pro-life cause, and who has the ability to make the pro-life case to bring more people into our movement, I’m your guy in the state legislature.”
• In another video blog recorded at a gala for the St. John Paul II Life Center, a non-profit specializing in anti-abortion counseling, Reitz noted that he and his wife were “huge fans” of its mission “to provide full spectrum, Christian, pro-life OB-GYN care, fertility care, natural family planning, and pro-life birth services.”  
• On “The Texan” podcast, Reitz discussed the 2019 failure of a six-week abortion ban bill in the state legislature, calling it “a betrayal of the 50,000 babies that are aborted in Texas every single year—that’s 150 a day in Texas, aborted.” He went on to say “that’s just shameful. I think that the abortion issue is awful and it’s a real stain on Texas and on the United States.”

• Reitz authored an op-ed criticizing the city of Austin, asserting that the local government “[d]efied Texas’ prohibition on using taxpayer dollars to fund abortions by setting aside $150,000 for abortion logistical assistance,” as part of its “tendency to pursue misguided policies that harm average, hardworking Texans.” 
• In his resignation letter to Paxton before departing the Texas Attorney General’s office for Sen. Cruz’s office, Reitz celebrated that “[t]ogether we’ve protected precious unborn children by defending Texas’s pro-life laws and blocking the Biden Administration’s attempts to undermine the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic Dobbs decision.”

• Reitz has completed fellowships with various organizations openly expressing extreme anti-abortion views including the Alliance Defending Freedom, John Jay Institute, Claremont Institute, and James Wilson Institute.
• While Reitz was serving as editor in chief of the Texas Review of Law and Politics, the journal published “The Jurisprudence of the Body,” an article criticizing Obama administration nondiscrimination protections for patients seeking gender-affirming care and abortion services.
  • Following his ruling attempting to invalidate the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, it was revealed that Judge Matthew Kascmaryk may have deliberately hidden his involvement in writing and publishing this article. The Washington Post reported that Kascmaryk had removed his name as sole author after months of working on the piece but did not disclose this to the Senate amidst consideration of his nomination to the federal bench. 
  • Reitz acknowledged that Kacsmaryk had been “our chief point of contact during much of the editing” and “was the placeholder until final authors were named by First Liberty,” where Kacsmaryk served as deputy general counsel.