WhatsApp is able to access user’s encrypted messages, Texas said in a lawsuit that accuses Meta Platforms Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg of lying to the US Senate in 2018 about the company’s steps to make them inaccessible.

The lawsuit brought in Texas state court says WhatsApp, the chat service Meta has owned since 2014, maintains access to communications from 3 billion users that it purports to be private.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) announced the lawsuit Thursday, accusing WhatsApp of marketing its services as secure but failing to “deliver on those promises.”

Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The case comes months after the Commerce Department abruptly closed an investigation into Meta over the same privacy concerns Paxton raised in the lawsuit. The probe was shut down after an investigator with the agency contacted other federal officials early this year to share his preliminary conclusions that Meta stores and is able to view WhatsApp messages.

“There is no limit to the type of WhatsApp message that can be viewed by Meta,” anagent with the Office of Export Enforcement inside the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security wrote.

Not long after the note, the agency closed the investigation, two people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News last month. One of them said it was done at the direction of senior agency leaders.

Meta has consistently maintained its employees are unable to access WhatsApp encrypted messages.

Zuckerberg reinforced that claim to the US Senate in 2018, insisting “Facebook systems do not see the content of messages being transferred over WhatsApp,” Paxton’s lawsuit said.

The Texas petition asserting deceptive trade practices violations follows privacy related suits Paxton’s brought against TikTok, Netflix, Google, Samsung, and other big technology companies.

Paxton is bringing the suit with Keller Postman LLC, the same firm that helped Texas in 2024 secure an historic $1.4 billion settlement from Meta for misusing facial recognition data. The firm billed the state $93.36 million for roughly 28,000 billable hours in the high-risk, high-reward contingency arrangement.

The lawsuit was filed in Harrison County, a single-judge courthouse where Paxton often files big anti-privacy cases.

The case is Texas v. Meta Platforms Inc., Tex. Dist. Ct., No. 26-0393, 5/21/26.