22-0186·Petition For Review
- The Tort Claims Act's emergency-vehicle exception does not always turn on recklessness: a court must first decide whether any law or ordinance applies to the emergency action and, if so, whether the officer complied with it, and only if none applies ask about recklessness.
- A separate provision, § 101.062, waives immunity for claims arising from responding to a 9-1-1 call only if the action violates an applicable statute or ordinance, and the court of appeals must consider it on remand.
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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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23-0474·Other
- A regulation can cause a compensable regulatory taking under the Texas Constitution even if it is a valid exercise of the government's police power and was adopted to comply with the National Flood Insurance Program.
- A developer's takings claim over a city's tougher floodplain elevation rule was ripe because the city's repeated non-responses and its position that the claim can never ripen showed finality, and the developer has standing because it owns the property whose value it says was damaged.
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23-0562·Petition For Review
- A city's immunity from a suit over a police dog bite is not waived where its K-9 officer is protected by official immunity, and the city carried its burden on the good-faith element with the officer's uncontroverted affidavit describing a dark, rapidly developing foot pursuit of multiple fleeing suspects.
- The court of appeals applied the wrong good-faith standard: the test is what a reasonably prudent officer could have believed, not what a reasonable person would have done, and evidence of mere negligence does not overcome it.
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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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23-0704·Petition For Review
- An off-duty police officer working private security is acting within the general scope of his governmental employment, and is entitled to dismissal under the Tort Claims Act's election-of-remedies provision (§ 101.106(f)), when he responds to a reasonable suspicion that a theft is occurring in his presence, because Texas law makes it his duty to prevent the crime.
- The Court adopted the public-safety officer's rule (the "firefighter's rule"): an actor who innocently or negligently creates a peril owes no duty to an on-duty public-safety officer injured by that same peril while engaged in emergency activities, though the rule does not shield more culpable conduct, independent tortious conduct, or a failure to warn of known hidden dangers after the officer arrives.
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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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23-0858·Petition For Review
- A police officer who, while responding to an armed-robbery call, looked away to raise his radio volume and slid into an intersection on wet pavement after the light turned yellow, without speeding or activating a siren he had discretion to use, acted at most with a momentary lapse of judgment amounting to ordinary negligence, not the conscious indifference or reckless disregard that defeats the Tort Claims Act's emergency exception.
- The court of appeals erred by discarding City of San Antonio v. Maspero as fact-bound and by treating its own earlier en banc decision as law of the case after this Court's intervening decisions.
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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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24-0102·Petition For Review
- Economic-development grants authorized by Article III, Section 52-a remain subject to the Gift Clauses' requirements: not gratuitous, a predominantly public purpose, and retained public control.
- The Court reversed a holding that Corsicana's sales-tax-revenue pledge to a private retailer's landlord was unconstitutional and remanded to the trial court to apply the correct framework.
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24-0428·Petition For Review
- The Tort Claims Act's waiver of governmental immunity for injuries caused by a government employee's "wrongful act or omission or the negligence" covers negligence per se claims based on statutes, like emergency-vehicle traffic provisions, that merely define more precisely what conduct breaches the common-law duty of care; the Court disapproved a contrary line of cases.
- The Court vacated the part of the court of appeals' judgment on official immunity and the emergency and 9-1-1 exceptions and remanded for reconsideration in light of City of Houston v. Rodriguez, City of Austin v. Powell and City of Killeen v. Terry.
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24-0447·Petition For Review
- The State is not immune from a landowner's suit to repurchase condemned land the State no longer needs for public use; the Legislature placed the repurchase right among eminent-domain provisions that authorize suits against the State.
- Property is acquired "through eminent domain" when the State files a condemnation suit even if the parties later settle the price, and a landowner may repurchase just the unneeded portion; district courts and county courts at law have concurrent jurisdiction over these claims.
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24-0452·Petition For Review
- After the Commission for Lawyer Discipline nonsuited its near-identical suit following Webster v. Commission for Lawyer Discipline, the Attorney General's petition became moot, and the Court vacated both the court of appeals' judgment and its opinion, which held the Attorney General is not a "governmental unit" entitled to appeal the denial of a plea to the jurisdiction.
- The Court vacated the opinion because the public interest is served by preventing an unreviewable decision on an issue of consequence to a frequent litigant, the State, from having legal effect where the mootness came from the unilateral action of the party that prevailed below.
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24-0457·Petition For Review
- Private organizations cannot sue to enforce the Texas Constitution's public-beach-access guarantee, because Article I, Section 33(d) says it "does not create a private right of enforcement."
- Because the plaintiffs' constitutional claims to strike down the Boca Chica Beach closure statutes were not facially viable, governmental immunity was not waived; the Court reinstated the trial court's dismissal of the consolidated cases.
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24-0772·Petition For Review
- Can a school district invoke governmental immunity to defeat a breach-of-contract claim on the theory that its superintendent lacked authority to sign contingent-fee grant-writing contracts that were unbudgeted or cost $25,000 or more?
- How should a court judge authority when a contingent-fee contract's cost was unknowable at signing: at execution, with a presumption of authority, or by what the contracts ultimately cost?
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24-0782·Petition For Review
- Individual Willacy County taxpayers have standing to contest South Texas ISD's ad valorem tax, and the court of appeals erred by relying on a taxpayer-standing doctrine that does not fit their claim; a school district in the county lacks standing.
- The Court remanded for the court of appeals to decide whether other jurisdictional hurdles bar the taxpayers' claims.
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24-0796·Petition For Review
- Pappas is entitled to jurisdictional discovery in its challenge to Houston's Hobby Airport concessions contract with Areas, because the contract could reasonably be read to require City expenditures over $50,000 that would trigger Chapter 252's competitive-bidding rules and waive immunity.
- The Court reversed the court of appeals' dismissal in part and remanded to the trial court for jurisdictional discovery.
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24-0802·Petition For Review
- A private government contractor is not a "governmental unit" under Section 51.014(a)(8) merely because its plea invokes the State's immunity, so the court of appeals lacked jurisdiction over Conduent's interlocutory appeal.
- Section 51.014(a)(5) does not help: it covers immunity asserted by an "individual" officer or employee, and a company is not an individual.
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24-0833·Petition For Review
- The Court denied the City of Houston's petition for review in a Tort Claims Act suit, and Justice Young, joined by Justice Devine, concurred to flag a split between the First and Fourteenth Courts of Appeals on whether a superseded admission is summary-judgment evidence that can create a fact issue.
- The concurrence doubted that amending an admission creates a genuine dispute of material fact and said the Court will need to resolve the question, but this case was not a good vehicle because the City objected to the superseded admissions only on timeliness grounds.
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24-0864·Petition For Review
- A holiday-themed community footrace, a Turkey Trot 5K, is "recreation" under the Recreational Use Statute, so the City of San Antonio is not liable for a participant's ordinary-negligence claim over a tripping injury in a city park.
- The Court reversed the court of appeals, rendered judgment in part for the City, and remanded.
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24-0916·Petition For Review
- The Court denied the City of Houston's petition for review in a car-crash suit over whether the city had "actual notice" of the claim under the Tort Claims Act, while Justice Young, joined by three colleagues, wrote separately to say the Court should be willing in an appropriate case to reconsider Cathey v. Booth and its progeny, which he said added requirements that the statute's text does not contain.
- Under Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 101.101, formal notice is unnecessary if the governmental unit has "actual notice" that death occurred or that the claimant was injured or her property damaged, and the concurrence argued the actual-notice case law has become confusing and jurisdictionally consequential.
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24-0924·Petition For Review
- A fraud claim against a company performing a regional transit authority's function was properly dismissed under Rule 91a because Texas law allows damages against such a contractor "only to the extent that" the authority would be liable, and DART could not be liable for the claim.
- The Court reinstated the dismissal of the fraud claim and remanded the rest of the case; it also cautioned about reviewing Rule 91a dismissals when key documents are missing from the record.
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24-0966·Petition For Review
- A former Texas Ranger's disability-discrimination claim against DPS failed as a matter of law: he was fired for threatening conduct at his daughter's school, and the holding turned on Section 21.105 of the Labor Code.
- The Court reversed in part and rendered judgment for DPS on the plea to the jurisdiction.
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24-1078·Petition For Review
- A trial court's refusal to rule on the State's plea to the jurisdiction is not an order that "grants or denies" the plea, so it cannot support an interlocutory appeal under Section 51.014(a)(8).
- Treating the petition as one for mandamus, the Court conditionally granted relief because the trial court may not decline to rule on a jurisdictional challenge to frustrate the State's appellate rights.
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25-0182·Petition For Review
- Do union electricians who are Corpus Christi ISD taxpayers have taxpayer standing to challenge the school board's prevailing-wage determination without identifying a specific, concrete expenditure of public funds on an illegal activity?
- If they do, did the school district's wage survey comply with the Prevailing Wages Act when it relied on a Texas A&M survey for Nueces County rather than only projects inside the district?
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25-0247·Petition For Review
- What causation standard governs a constitutional takings claim that a governmental entity's flood-control releases flooded, or made worse the flooding of, private property: whether the "substantial factor" requirement applies, or whether but-for causation is enough.
- Whether homeowners' expert evidence about a river authority's Lake Conroe dam releases during Hurricane Harvey raised a fact issue on causation, so the court of appeals erred in dismissing their takings claims, or at least should have remanded in the interest of justice because it announced a new causation standard.
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25-0267·Petition For Review
- Whether a court of appeals has jurisdiction over an interlocutory appeal from the denial of a plea to the jurisdiction when the officials' plea challenged only official-capacity claims and the plaintiff had nonsuited those claims, leaving only individual-capacity claims.
- Whether a court of appeals may dismiss individual-capacity claims against county officials, including federal section 1983 claims, when the officials never moved for summary judgment or otherwise challenged those claims in the trial court.
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25-0291·Petition For Review
- Whether the Texas Tort Claims Act's discretionary-function exceptions (sections 101.056 and 101.060) bar a premises-defect claim against TxDOT over loose limestone rock asphalt on a repaved highway, including whether loose rock asphalt is a "special defect" and whether those exceptions apply when a statutory duty dictates TxDOT's actions.
- Whether the manufacturer of limestone rock asphalt had a duty to warn TxDOT's maintenance yard workers that the material has a limited shelf life, whether that duty turns on the workers' subjective knowledge or the objective needs of all foreseeable users, and, alternatively, whether the judgment can be affirmed on no-evidence grounds.
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25-0429·Petition For Review
- Can a condition located off the roadway, such as an uncovered drainage opening near a worn pedestrian footpath, be a "special defect" that waives the State's immunity under the Tort Claims Act?
- Is an unexpected, concealed drainage opening analogous to an excavation for special-defect purposes?
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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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25-0648·Petition For Review
- Whether timely service of process on a governmental employee excuses a Tort Claims Act plaintiff from timely serving the employer when she sued both from the start, and whether University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio v. Bailey applies when the employer, rather than the employee, moved to dismiss the employee under section 101.106(e).
- Whether the plaintiff exercised diligence in serving the employee, whom she sued at the end of limitations in 2016 but did not serve until 2018, so that her claims were timely regardless of how the first question is answered.
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25-0762·Petition For Review
- Whether a plaintiff who timely sued a governmental employee within the two-year limitations period, but then missed Tort Claims Act section 101.106(f)'s 30-day window to substitute the employer after the employee moved to dismiss, may maintain her claim against the employer when she added it fifty-three days later and after limitations had run.
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25-0774·Petition For Review
- Whether a trial court's re-filing of a plaintiff's notice of nonsuit containing the language "This is final and disposes of all claims and actions made the basis of this lawsuit" as a signed order made a final judgment, so that the trial court lost plenary power and later could not enter a default judgment against the City and its police officer.
- Whether a Tort Claims Act plaintiff's petition affirmatively demonstrates subject-matter jurisdiction when it alleges jurisdictional facts in the alternative against two governmental units, pleads nothing about scope of employment, and does not negate the Act's emergency exception for police vehicles, and whether negligent entrustment is cognizable and a default judgment may be entered against both a governmental unit and its employee.
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25-0776·Mandamus
- Whether the trial court abused its discretion by entering a default judgment against the City of Houston and its police officer after its plenary power expired, because Guzman's notice of nonsuit, re-filed by the court as a signed order, had already disposed of all claims and actions.
- Alternatively, whether the court abused its discretion by failing to perform the ministerial act of entering a final judgment on that nonsuit, and whether the default judgment is void because Guzman did not plead facts affirmatively demonstrating the court's subject-matter jurisdiction.
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25-0890·Petition For Review
- Whether the State may avoid its duty under Article I, Section 17 of the Texas Constitution to pay compensation for taking and destroying a non-party's trade secrets by pointing to a research contract it had with a third party, under the "color of contract" rule.
- Whether the court of appeals wrongly defined the alleged taking as the State's initial access to the property under the contract rather than its later use and public disclosure of the trade secrets beyond that access, and whether its approach revives the "subjective belief" test rejected in Texas Department of Transportation v. Self.
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25-0997·Petition For Review
- Whether, in a Texas Tort Claims Act suit over a collision with a police vehicle, the plaintiff must plead facts negating the emergency exception to the Act's immunity waiver once the City invokes the exception in its answer, and when the exception is "plausibly implicated" so that the plaintiff bears that burden at the Rule 91a stage.
- Whether a plaintiff's conclusory allegation that the City "had timely notice of claim that it was responsible for damages arising out of the subject collision" satisfies the Act's notice requirement, and whether the City can obtain dismissal under Rule 91a on official-immunity grounds.
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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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25-1072·Petition For Review
- Justice Lehrmann concurred in the denial of review of a retaliation suit by a charter-school employee fired after reporting her boss to CPS, giving no view on whether she was a "professional" under Family Code § 261.110, the question the court of appeals decided against her.
- She wrote separately to urge the Legislature to extend the retaliation protection to everyone required to report child abuse, not just "professionals," and left open whether the common-law Sabine Pilot exception could protect an employee fired for reporting abuse by her own supervisor.
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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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26-0085·Petition For Review
- Whether the common-law mailbox rule applies to the Tort Claims Act's requirement that a governmental unit "receive" notice within six months, so that proof of mailing creates a fact issue on receipt.
- Whether, if the rule does not apply, the case must be remanded for the court of appeals to decide Mohrman's alternative actual-notice ground, which it did not reach.
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26-0128·Petition For Review
- When a governmental unit invokes the Tort Claims Act's emergency exception, must the plaintiff negate the emergency with affirmative evidence, and can a county courtesy-patrol officer's post-accident statements, a blank "on emergency" box on a crash report and a dispute over his lights raise a fact issue?
- Does a vehicle stopped in rush-hour traffic that a courtesy-patrol officer says he was moving toward qualify as an "emergency situation" under section 101.055(2) as a matter of law?
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