Open Records—The SCOTX Report

23-0244·Petition For Review

TCEQ did not miss its ten-day deadline to ask the Attorney General whether it could withhold documents requested by the Sierra Club: its follow-up email seeking to narrow the request reset the clock, and it also gained time by proving it deposited its request in interagency mail.
The Court reversed the summary judgment ordering TCEQ to produce the documents and remanded, noting the Attorney General's office disavowed its own late-request decision.

23-0679·Petition For Review

The Court denied rehearing of its denial of Fort Bend ISD's petition for review of a ruling that phone logs of district representatives' personal cell phones are public information subject to the Public Information Act to the extent they concern public business, and Justice Young concurred, calling the district's privacy arguments serious but not persuasive on this record.
The concurrence said that in an appropriate case, such as one where government requires employees to give up privacy in their own phones, the Court should carefully consider how the Act applies to privately owned cell phones and the effect of the federal and Texas search-and-seizure provisions, and he would be inclined to grant review.

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.

25-0759·Petition For Review

Should the Court overrule In re City of Georgetown and hold attorney-client privilege isn't "other law" that overrides Public Information Act disclosure, or, if privilege still applies, narrow it so it doesn't shield a purely factual investigation with no legal advice?
Did the district waive privilege when a senior official publicly disclosed the withheld report's conclusions?

26-0373·Mandamus

Can a district court nullify a court of appeals' final mandate ordering disclosure of grand-juror names under the Public Information Act by ordering the district attorney to return the records to the court and sealing them as judicial "personnel information"?
Does this Court's mandamus jurisdiction reach a district attorney directly, or only the district judge, and is mandamus appropriate given the competing interest in grand-juror privacy?