23-0149·Petition For Review
- A taxpayer suing the Comptroller for a sales-tax refund in district court must prove entitlement to an exemption by a preponderance of the evidence, not by clear and convincing evidence, because the Tax Code provides for trial de novo and the Comptroller's rule applies only to the administrative process.
- A private, for-profit prison operator that contracts with governments to house inmates is not an "agent" or "instrumentality" of the federal or state government exempt from sales and use tax on its purchases.
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23-0167·Petition For Review
- The Division of Workers' Compensation does not have exclusive jurisdiction to decide whether an injury was work-related when the employer raises the issue only as an exclusive-remedy defense to an employee's negligence suit and the employee's requested relief does not depend on entitlement to benefits, so the district court may decide it and the employee need not first exhaust administrative remedies.
- The Court disapproved contrary court of appeals decisions, noting that prudential abatement may be warranted if parallel proceedings are pending before the Division and that employees should still file timely compensation claims to protect their rights.
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23-0192·Petition For Review
- The Court held that Texas has no "public-interest exception" to mootness: because the Texas Constitution limits courts to the "judicial power" and to live "cases," a moot dispute cannot be decided on the merits however important the question, and the only proper judgment is dismissal for lack of jurisdiction.
- Detained mothers' state-law challenge to a rule licensing two family immigration-detention centers was moot after their release, the capable-of-repetition exception failed because their re-detention at those facilities with a child for a long enough time was speculative, and the Court vacated the court of appeals' merits ruling striking the rule and dismissed the case without prejudice.
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23-0273·Other
- Justice Young, joined by Justice Sullivan, concurred in the denial of a facial challenge to the Division of Workers' Compensation's rule on job applications for supplemental income benefits, writing that a facial challenge was the wrong vehicle for deciding whether the rule impermissibly drops the statute's requirement that applications be "submitted by the recipient."
- He said the question would likely merit review in a challenge to a specific award, or if the rule were shown to require unlawful awards, and that in such a case the Court could and should assess critically an agency's power to rewrite statutory criteria now that the U.S. Supreme Court has abandoned Chevron deference.
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23-0282·Petition For Review
- TCEQ's Tier 2 antidegradation rule asks whether a discharge lowers a water body's overall "water quality" by more than a de minimis extent, not whether any single water-quality parameter such as dissolved oxygen changes, so TCEQ's whole-water approach follows its rules as written.
- TCEQ's final order granting the City of Dripping Springs a wastewater discharge permit did not need a separate statement of underlying facts, because its findings are not set out in statutory language and Save Our Springs did not preserve the complaint.
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23-0644·Petition For Review
- A landowner has standing to seek a declaratory judgment under Government Code § 2001.038(a) that an agency licensing rule does not apply to it where the agency threatens a fine under the rule, because a declaration of inapplicability would redress that threatened loss.
- A suit asking whether a rule applies to the plaintiff at all is a proper "applicability" challenge that waives sovereign immunity, and it is not defeated because the court of appeals thought the rule plainly applies or because an administrative proceeding is pending.
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23-0711·Petition For Review
- The Court denied rehearing of its denial of the petition for review in a $1,000 Texas Payday Law dispute in which an employer's suit for judicial review was dismissed for want of jurisdiction because it was filed in Harris County rather than the claimant's home county, and Justice Young, joined by Justice Busby, concurred in the denial.
- The concurrence said two issues raised on rehearing merit further consideration in a suitable case: whether a suit that names the Workforce Commission only as a required defendant is truly a suit "against a governmental entity" under Government Code § 311.034, and whether a mandatory-venue provision is a "statutory prerequisite to suit" that carries jurisdictional consequences.
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23-0742·Petition For Review
- A landowner that twice sought party status in groundwater-permit proceedings and was refused exhausted its administrative remedies and properly invoked the courts' jurisdiction, even though it sued before 90 days had passed from its reconsideration requests.
- The Court reversed the court of appeals' judgments in both cases and remanded.
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23-0772·Petition For Review
- The Court granted the petition, vacated the court of appeals' judgment and remanded to the trial court under the parties' settlement in a challenge to the Railroad Commission's permit for a multi-tract horizontal well drilled without the mineral owners' consent.
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23-0842·Petition For Review
- Equitable estoppel may be applied against a city in an exceptional case where justice requires it and it does not interfere with governmental functions: a city's mere mistaken issuance of a permit is not enough, but affirmative misdirection, an inspection-approved amended permit, and an "OK TO FINISH" notice were enough here.
- A city need not have received a benefit from its misrepresentation for estoppel to apply; benefit is a factor that weighs in favor of the exception, not a requirement.
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23-0887·Petition For Review
- Sovereign immunity bars hemp vendors' ultra vires claims against the DSHS Commissioner over her 2021 changes to the controlled-substance schedules, because Texas law gives her significant discretion to set and modify them.
- The vendors have standing and their claims are ripe, but immunity also bars their remaining claims against the Department, so the Court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and rendered judgment.
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24-0037·Petition For Review
- Section 171.103(a)(1) sources franchise-tax receipts from goods to Texas when the seller yields possession and control to a buyer at a location in Texas, even if the buyer takes the goods elsewhere for use, so Comptroller rules making the transfer point determinative are valid.
- NuStar's bunker-fuel sales delivered to foreign-registered vessels at Texas ports were properly sourced to Texas.
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24-0081·Mandamus
- A mandamus petition by property owners asking the Court to compel the Comptroller to issue a final decision in their Private Real Property Rights Preservation Act case became moot when the Comptroller issued a final decision, so the Court dismissed it for lack of jurisdiction, without prejudice.
- The Court noted the law remains unclear about how to seek judicial review after an ALJ dismisses such a case at SOAH, but it cannot resolve that question absent a live controversy.
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24-0116·Certified Question
- Under TCEQ's definition of "best available control technology," a pollution control method "has proven to be operational" when real-world experience and research have demonstrated that it is operational, obtainable and capable of reducing emissions; it need not currently operate under a TCEQ permit, and it does not include methods TCEQ merely deems capable of operating in the future.
- A permit previously issued to one facility does not by itself establish best available control technology for later, similar facilities; the statute requires only that a proposed facility use at least the best available control technology, considering technical practicability and economic reasonableness.
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24-0162·Petition For Review
- Government Code § 552.321(b), which requires a Public Information Act mandamus suit to be filed in the district court of the county where the governmental body's main offices are located, is a venue provision that does not give district courts jurisdiction to issue writs of mandamus against constitutional executive officers like the Governor and Attorney General.
- Under Government Code § 22.002(c) and A & T Consultants v. Sharp, only the Supreme Court may issue mandamus against those officers, so the district court lacked jurisdiction over American Oversight's petition; the requestor's remaining remedies include criminal penalties and suit under § 552.3215 through the Travis County district attorney.
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24-0339·Petition For Review
- School-board members who won a temporary injunction ordering the district to produce records they were entitled to under Education Code § 11.1512 "prevailed" for attorney's-fee purposes even though their terms later expired, because the order effectively gave them the final relief the statute authorizes.
- The statute also excepts board members from the general requirement to exhaust administrative remedies before suing.
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24-0340·Petition For Review
- The redundant-remedies doctrine does not bar a congressional candidate's ultra vires and as-applied constitutional claims against the Texas Medical Board's cease-and-desist order over his use of the titles "Dr." and "physician," because those claims seek declaratory and injunctive relief broader than the reversal of the order that an Administrative Procedure Act appeal could provide.
- His substantial-evidence claim was properly dismissed for want of jurisdiction because a district court's review of an agency order requires a statute authorizing it, and a since-repealed Board rule cannot create jurisdiction.
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24-0385·Petition For Review
- The Court vacated three temporary injunctions barring DFPS from investigating reports of gender-transition care for minors, because the families' claims were moot (investigations closed or no minor children remained), the advocacy group's claim fell with its members', and the psychologist's alleged injuries were speculative.
- It reversed the court of appeals and vacated the trial court's orders for lack of jurisdiction in a per curiam opinion without argument.
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24-0794·Petition For Review
- The parties' 1984 pole-attachment agreement's "all laws" clause incorporates later-enacted statutes affecting either side's rights or obligations—including PURA's rate-discrimination and rate-ceiling provisions—regardless of whether the agreement itself technically "renews" each year.
- The Public Utility Regulatory Act applies to this agreement, and CPS Energy's practice of invoicing Spectrum and AT&T at the same rate while collecting only from Spectrum violates the statute's ban on discriminatory pole-attachment pricing.
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24-0892·Other
- The trial court erred in ruling that PFLAG need not comply with the Attorney General's civil investigative demand under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act; the Court reversed and remanded.
- The AG suspects providers misrepresented services to insurers, and a CID may seek any "documentary material which would be discoverable under the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure."
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24-0958·Petition For Review
- Does the Water Code or the Administrative Procedure Act set the deadline for suing over a groundwater district's permitting decision?
- Did the court of appeals even have jurisdiction over this interlocutory appeal in the first place?
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25-0127·Petition For Review
- The Texas Health Care Program Fraud Prevention Act imposes liability for an omission only if the omission is material to the government's payment decision, because the Act incorporates the common-law materiality requirement for fraud.
- LabCorp's alleged omissions and misstatements were immaterial as a matter of law because it disclosed its billing practices to the State in 2014 and the State kept paying its claims for seven years without objection, so summary judgment for LabCorp was reinstated.
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25-0149·Mandamus
- A Texas trial court abuses its discretion by referring a question to an administrative agency under the primary-jurisdiction doctrine unless the Legislature or Congress has clearly granted the agency jurisdiction to answer that specific question.
- Because no statute clearly empowered the Surface Transportation Board to decide whether a railroad is a "common carrier" under FELA, the Court conditionally granted mandamus and directed the trial court to vacate its referral order.
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25-0527·Petition For Review
- Whether the Commissioner of Education's rule giving a school operating partner "final" authority to assign district teachers to its campus is valid, or exceeds his rulemaking authority under Education Code § 11.174(m).
- Whether district teachers hold any statutory or constitutional right, including the right to grieve a campus assignment, that the rule impairs.
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25-0564·Petition For Review
- When the Commission denies a contested-case hearing on an air permit without holding any evidentiary hearing, may it weigh and resolve disputed facts about the permit's effects against the requesters, and is its affected-person decision reviewed for substantial evidence?
- If the requesters were denied a contested-case hearing, may a court still review the merits of the minor-source air permit, or does the Clean Air Act and exhaustion doctrine make participation in a contested-case hearing a prerequisite to judicial review?
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25-0641·Mandamus
- A court of appeals abused its discretion by granting a Rule 29.3 stay that kept a temporary injunction against the Attorney General's new prosecutor-reporting rules in place for the named appellees without making a preliminary inquiry into the likely merits, which In re State requires before countermanding the State's automatic supersedeas.
- The Court conditionally granted mandamus and directed the court of appeals to evaluate the merits and decide by January 5, 2026 whether a Rule 29.3 stay is warranted, without preventing it from granting one under the proper standard.
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25-0663·Mandamus
- Did a probate court abuse its discretion by sua sponte ordering that a private forensic examiner search the State's confidential abuse-and-neglect database for records the Department of Family and Protective Services says were purged, without the analysis In re Weekley Homes requires?
- Does Human Resources Code § 48.101 let a judge delegate in camera review of confidential investigatory records, and does the Department lack an adequate remedy by appeal?
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25-0748·Petition For Review
- Whether homeowners have a vested property right to operate short-term rentals in single-family residential districts, and whether the City of Dallas's zoning and registration ordinances deny them due course of law under the Texas Constitution, so that the temporary injunction against the ordinances was proper.
- Whether the homeowners showed a probable right to relief on their alternative claims: that the ordinances are retroactive, amount to a regulatory taking, violate equal protection, exceed the Zoning Enabling Act, and are preempted by the Texas Regulatory Consistency ("Death Star") Act, or alternatively whether the Court should modify the injunction so unchallenged provisions of the Registration Ordinance may take effect.
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25-0754·Mandamus
- The Court denied an emergency petition for writ of mandamus challenging the ballot language for the Austin City Council's November 2025 property-tax-increase election, and Justice Young issued a statement calling the question close but saying the denial is no precedent or endorsement of the language.
- The statement noted the ballot's purpose clause lists specific programs but adds a catchall for other general fund expenditures, that a tax increase compounds in later years' voter-approval rates, and that the Court may need to give further guidance once new legislation on ballot language, S.B. 506, is tested.
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25-0775·Petition For Review
- Whether the Board of the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles "acted" on motions for rehearing within the Administrative Procedure Act's deadline when a majority voted by email the day before the deadline but did not sign written orders granting rehearing until one and two days after rehearing was overruled by operation of law.
- If the Board lost jurisdiction, whether the Board properly overturned the administrative law judge's findings on a Mazda dealer's trustworthiness and financial investment, and applied a legally sufficient standard, in refusing to let Mazda terminate the dealer's franchise, and which challenges to the termination order may proceed, and in which court, if that order became final.
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25-0977·Mandamus
- The Court denied a grieving mother's pro se mandamus petition to correct the informant listed on her son's death certificate, but Justice Young (joined by Justices Devine and Busby) concurred to describe the "Kafkaesque" runaround she faced and to urge the Department of State Health Services and the courts to help her.
- The Department's response did not dispute her allegations but argued lack of standing and sovereign immunity, and outlined a path: get a court order in probate, justice, or district court, then file a VS-172 form with a certified copy.
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25-1030·Mandamus
- Whether the Fifteenth Court of Appeals abused its discretion by denying Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 29.3 relief, which would have kept in place a temporary injunction against the State's award of more than $100 billion in Medicaid and CHIP managed-care contracts, on the sole ground that a standstill agreement meant the health plans faced no irreparable harm.
- Whether the State's automatic supersedeas on appeal and the merits of the plans' ultra vires claims (sovereign immunity, exhaustion of the bid-protest process, ripeness, standing) justify denying that temporary relief, and whether a court of appeals may issue a writ of injunction to protect its own jurisdiction without a showing of irreparable harm to the parties.
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25-1093·Petition For Review
- Did ENGIE IR and the school district plead a viable ultra vires claim against the Comptroller for withdrawing a Chapter 313 certificate after the Comptroller's review deadline and after the statute expired, even though the court of appeals found the withdrawal unauthorized but "harmless"?
- Was the certificate invalid from the start because the applicant merged before it issued, and can a withdrawal that may have been unauthorized still support an ultra vires claim in that case?
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26-0110·Petition For Review
- The Court granted the Attorney General's petition for review and, on the parties' joint motion, vacated the Fifteenth Court of Appeals' judgment and dismissed the case as moot, ending a challenge to Attorney General rules requiring local prosecutors to report to his office.
- The vacated decision had held an agency's rulemaking power cannot be conferred by implication and affirmed a temporary injunction against the rules.
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