LCRA applied in 2018 for permits to operate and transport up to 25,000 acre-feet of groundwater per year from eight wells in Bastrop County. The District referred the applications to the State Office of Administrative Hearings (SOAH) for a contested case hearing; several parties intervened (the respondent-intervenors here: Aqua Water Supply Corporation, City of Elgin, Environmental Stewardship, Recharge Water LP, and Andy Wier). After SOAH's administrative law judges issued a proposal for decision, the District's board modified some findings and granted LCRA permits capped at 8,000 acre-feet per year -- roughly a third of what LCRA had requested.
LCRA moved for rehearing of the District's order; the District granted rehearing and issued a revised final order with additional supporting findings, reaching the same result. LCRA then filed a second motion for rehearing of the revised order, which the District never acted on. While that second motion was still pending, LCRA sued for judicial review in Bastrop County district court, acknowledging in its petition that the second rehearing motion remained pending before the District. The District and the intervenors filed pleas to the jurisdiction, arguing LCRA's suit was untimely (or, alternatively, unexhausted) under whichever deadline applied. The trial court granted the pleas and dismissed for want of jurisdiction. The Third Court of Appeals affirmed, with the majority agreeing that the APA's rehearing deadline governed and that LCRA sued too late under it. Two justices concurred in the judgment only, writing separately that the Water Code -- not the APA -- actually controls, criticizing the majority's reliance on the panel's own prior, unanalyzed precedent (End Op, L.P. v. Meyer), and calling for en banc reconsideration, which the full court denied. LCRA petitioned the Supreme Court for review; the petition was granted June 19, 2026, with oral argument set for October 6, 2026.
Petitioner (Lower Colorado River Authority): Water Code Section 36.416(a) borrows APA procedure only for the single SOAH contested-case hearing -- not for anything that happens after. Reading "state agency" to mean "local groundwater district," or "hearing" to mean the entire administrative process including a later rehearing, requires ignoring the statute's text and assumes the Legislature meant to write Water Code procedures for post-SOAH rehearing that could never actually apply. LCRA's suit, filed under the Water Code's own timeline, was timely measured from the District's truly final order, and no Water Code exhaustion requirement obligated LCRA to wait for the District to rule on a second rehearing motion the statute doesn't even limit a party to filing once. LCRA also invokes the Court's recent decision in Cockrell Investment Partners v. Middle Pecos Groundwater Conservation District for the proposition that an exhaustion requirement applies only when a statute actually imposes one.
Respondents (Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District, Aqua Water Supply Corporation, City of Elgin, Environmental Stewardship, and Andy Wier): The trial court lacked jurisdiction regardless of which deadline applies. Under the APA's rehearing deadline -- which respondents argue controls because Section 36.416(a)'s reference to "hearing" sweeps in the entire contested-case process, and because the District functions as a "state agency" for these purposes -- LCRA sued too late. Even if the Water Code's own deadline governs instead, LCRA still failed to exhaust its administrative remedies, because it sued while its second rehearing motion remained undecided, and its later amended petition didn't cure that defect.
Yes. The petition frames this as an issue of first impression on which the panel below itself split (two justices concurred in the judgment only, disagreeing with the majority's statutory analysis and calling the panel's own governing precedent, End Op, L.P. v. Meyer, wrongly decided). The petition also argues the resulting uncertainty has ongoing, real-world consequences for every groundwater district and permit litigant in the state, citing amicus Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority's account of being forced into what it called wasteful satellite litigation over the same deadline confusion.
water-law, administrative-law, civil-procedure
Petition for Review (Tex. R. App. P. 53.1); granted June 19, 2026; set for oral argument October 6, 2026. Not yet decided.
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