The Open Beaches Act, enacted in 1959, declares the public's "free and unrestricted right of ingress and egress to and from the state-owned beaches," and for decades it was the State and local governments that enforced that right.¹ In 2009 Texas voters wrote the right into the Constitution as Article I, Section 33, which dedicates a "permanent easement" in favor of the public but also says in subsection (d) that the section "does not create a private right of enforcement".² In 2013 the Legislature passed House Bill 2623, which let the General Land Office (GLO) commissioner make rules for closing beaches during space flight activities and let a county containing an FAA-approved launch site temporarily close a beach near the site on launch dates; the FAA had conditioned its approval of SpaceX's Boca Chica launch site on SpaceX's ability to restrict public access.³ SaveRGV, a nonprofit environmental group, sued the GLO, its commissioner, and Cameron County in 2021, alleging that repeated closures of Boca Chica Beach and the only access road interfere with its members' use of the beach, and the Sierra Club and Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, Inc. intervened as plaintiffs with the same claims.⁴

The Attorney General intervened to defend the statutes, and the Attorney General, the GLO and its commissioner, and Cameron County each filed a plea to the jurisdiction asserting lack of standing and immunity; the Attorney General and the GLO argued among other things that Section 33(d) deprived the plaintiffs of standing.¹ The trial court granted all three pleas and dismissed the claims with prejudice.² The Thirteenth Court of Appeals (Corpus Christi-Edinburg) reversed: Sierra Club had standing, the Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act (UDJA) waived immunity, and it was unnecessary to ask whether the plaintiffs' claims were viable because they challenged a statute, not governmental action.³ The court of appeals denied rehearing and en banc reconsideration without explanation.⁴ The vehicle in this Court is three consolidated petitions for review, one each from the GLO and Land Commissioner (No. 24-0237), Cameron County (No. 24-0407), and the Attorney General (No. 24-0457), argued on March 5, 2026.⁵ The Court delivered its opinion on June 19, 2026,⁶ and denied SaveRGV's motion for rehearing on October 2, 2026.

Three consolidated petitions for review from the Thirteenth Court of Appeals (Corpus Christi-Edinburg), from the grant of pleas to the jurisdiction; argued March 5, 2026, and decided June 19, 2026.⁷

The Government Parties' brief presents two issues:¹ 1. Whether the UDJA waives immunity from suit for a constitutional challenge to a statute even when the challenge is facially invalid. 2. Whether the plaintiffs' challenges to House Bill 2623 are facially invalid, and so jurisdictionally barred, because they rest on an incorrect construction of Article I, Section 33.

Respondents frame the questions as whether a plaintiff who alleges that specific statutes violate the Bill of Rights has presented a viable claim within the trial court's jurisdiction, and whether sovereign immunity deprives a trial court of jurisdiction to decide the constitutionality of specific statutes in a declaratory suit.² The GLO and Cameron County also argued that Section 33(d) bars the suit outright.³

Whether subject matter jurisdiction exists is a question of law reviewed de novo; a plea challenging the pleadings asks whether the plaintiff pleaded facts that affirmatively demonstrate jurisdiction, and the Court interprets the Constitution by looking to what the voters who ratified it would have understood it to mean.¹

Whether the UDJA waives immunity for a facially invalid constitutional claim against a statute.

Government Parties (Petitioners): The Attorney General, the GLO, the Land Commissioner, and Cameron County, collectively the "Government Parties," say the UDJA waives immunity for a constitutional challenge to a statute only if the claim is facially valid, so the court of appeals erred in refusing to consider facial validity on the theory that the standard applies only to challenges to governmental conduct.¹ Klumb and MALC require the inquiry, they say, and the Court should apply it itself rather than remand.²

Respondents (SaveRGV, et al.): The court of appeals properly looked only at the pleadings, which challenge two statutory provisions as conflicting with Section 33; viability turns on the adequacy of the pleadings, not the merits, and the Government Parties attack a strawman version of the claims.³

Government Parties (reply): Respondents do not dispute that the facial-validity standard applies; the court of appeals' opinion cannot be read as having applied it, and a possible challenge to a new law is no reason to leave the opinion on the books.⁴

Whether Article I, Section 33 bars these claims on its face.

Government Parties (Petitioners): Plaintiffs' claims rest on an "absolutist" reading under which any law that impedes beach access is void, but "unrestricted" cannot mean the government could never close a beach during a hurricane or oil spill, Section 33(c) lets the Legislature protect the public's right, and temporary closures during nearby launches fit within the public's easement.⁵

Respondents (SaveRGV, et al.): Section 33's plain text, context, and the history of open beaches show it limits the Legislature's power to impede the public's easement, and HB 2623 benefits a private company's launches rather than serving a public-safety purpose that could justify it as a police-power regulation.⁶

Whether Section 33(d) bars suit by private plaintiffs.

GLO and Cameron County (Petitioners): Subsection (d)'s disclaimer categorically precludes private suits to enforce Section 33, so the entire case should be dismissed because every plaintiff is a private party; the Attorney General abandoned this argument in the court of appeals and did not press it here.⁷

Respondents (SaveRGV, et al.): Their declaratory suit challenges a statute and does not seek to enforce Section 33 or the Open Beaches Act; injunctive relief is a proper form of relief against an unconstitutional statute, and a suit to remove an obstruction from the beach or for damages would be the kind of private enforcement subsection (d) forbids.⁸

Whether a remand should be left in place because of a new law.

Respondents (SaveRGV, et al.): A remand would let them add claims challenging a 2025 law, H.B. 5246, under which the Texas Space Commission board "shall" order closure of Boca Chica Beach as needed to promote space-related industries.⁹

Government Parties (reply): That is not a valid reason to deny review.¹⁰

The Government Parties argued that the court of appeals' refusal to consider facial validity squarely conflicts with this Court's decisions and those of other courts of appeals, and that an authoritative construction of Section 33 is needed because it governs beaches in multiple court of appeals districts.¹ Respondents answered that the petitions present no compelling reason for review because they mischaracterize the pleadings.²

• Space Exploration Technologies Corp. supports the Government Parties: Section 33's easement is subject to reasonable regulation, and space launches serve a state and national policy.
• South Texas Environmental Justice Network supports Respondents: SpaceX uses the beach as a blast zone, and the new Space Commission law makes this a poor vehicle.

Holding

A constitutional claim must be facially valid before the UDJA waives immunity, whether it challenges a statute or governmental conduct, and Section 33(d)'s statement that Section 33 "does not create a private right of enforcement" bars these private plaintiffs' claims, so they are facially invalid and the defendants keep their immunity.¹ The Court did not decide whether the closures or the statutes authorizing them violate Section 33(b).²

Reasoning

Facial validity comes first. The court of appeals erred by skipping the facial-validity step because the plaintiffs challenged a statute rather than governmental action, since Klumb, Mexican American Legislative Caucus, and Zurawski apply the same analysis to statutes, and "whether such claims are premised on allegedly unconstitutional governmental conduct or allegedly unconstitutional statutes is immaterial".³ Rather than remand, the Court decided the question itself in the interest of judicial economy because the parties had briefed and argued it.⁴

Subsection (d) means governmental actors enforce Section 33. Reading the text as the 2009 voters would have, "private right" means a personal right as opposed to a right of the public or the State, so Section 33 created no new personal right of enforcement for individuals.⁵ The Court rejected the court of appeals' view that subsection (d) reaches only injunctions against private defendants, because a request for an injunction is not necessary to fall within subsection (d) and its reach does not depend on whether the defendant is private.⁶

Context confirms it. The Open Beaches Act required or authorized the GLO commissioner, county attorneys, and the Attorney General to enforce the public's right and contained only one provision authorizing private suits, which does not apply here, so subsection (d) signaled that the existing governmental enforcement scheme would continue.⁷ A 2009 newspaper editorial and a House Research Organization report said the same thing about the proposed amendment.⁸

The Bill of Rights placement does not change this. City of Beaumont v. Bouillion stands for the principle that private citizens can seek to declare statutes that conflict with Article I void, but Section 33 differs from other Bill of Rights provisions by including express language disclaiming private enforcement, which the Court gave effect to.⁹

No cure on remand. Because the defect is that the plaintiffs are private actors, it cannot be fixed by repleading, and the pleadings "conclusively negate the existence of subject-matter jurisdiction," so dismissal with prejudice was correct.¹⁰ The Court noted that its holding does not bar the Tribe, or private parties generally, from seeking relief for injuries to religious practices caused by HB 2623, only from using Section 33 as the basis for it.¹¹

Disposition

Court of appeals' judgment reversed and the trial court's judgment dismissing all claims for lack of jurisdiction reinstated.¹²

Vote Breakdown

Justice Huddle delivered the opinion of the Court.¹³