23-0067·Petition For Review
- Due process requires clear and convincing evidence to support a protective order that prohibits all contact between a parent and her children for more than two years under Family Code § 85.025(a-1), because such an order profoundly interferes with a parent's fundamental right to the care, custody, and control of her children in a way similar to termination.
- The trial court must also consider the child's best interest in deciding whether to ban all parental contact for longer than two years; because the court of appeals applied a preponderance standard, the Court remanded for a new hearing.
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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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23-0474·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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23-0679·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.
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23-0703·Petition For Review
- Business Organizations Code § 22.207, which lets a religious conference elect and control the board of a nonprofit educational corporation, protects the Conference's authority to sue SMU to enforce its rights under the articles of incorporation, so § 20.002's limit on who may challenge ultra vires acts does not bar the suit.
- SMU's articles are not a contract between SMU and the Conference, but the articles are a contract between SMU and the State, and given § 22.207 and the articles' express grants of rights, the Conference may pursue its breach-of-contract claim as a third-party beneficiary; SMU was entitled to summary judgment on the false-filing claim because the certificate of amendment, read as a whole, was not materially false.
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23-0767·Petition For Review
- Under the constitutional-avoidance doctrine, the Court vacated lower-court judgments that dismissed as a nonjusticiable political question a challenge to a city's regulation of nonvoting residents of its extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) under the Texas Constitution's republican-form-of-government clause, because a 2023 law lets ETJ property owners unilaterally opt out of a city's ETJ.
- The case is remanded with instructions to abate so the property owners can use the statutory release process; if they do not do so within a reasonable time, the suit may be dismissed because any injury would result from their choice to remain subject to the ordinances.
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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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24-0162·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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24-0236·Mandamus
- The Court denied mandamus in a suit by two women who were sexually abused by family members against Bill Gothard and the Institute in Basic Life Principles, which challenged the civil-conspiracy claim under Rule 91a and the ecclesiastical-abstention doctrine, and Chief Justice Blacklock, joined by Justices Devine and Sullivan, dissented from the denial.
- The dissent would have granted the petition and required repleading because the petition's main link between Gothard and the abuse is the content of his religious teachings on authority, sexuality and family, which the dissenters said cannot be tried in a Texas court.
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24-0239·Mandamus
- The Court denied Novartis's petition for writ of mandamus challenging a qui tam suit under the Texas Medicaid Fraud Prevention Act (now the Texas Health Care Program Fraud Prevention Act) on relator standing and separation-of-powers grounds, and Justices Young and Sullivan issued a statement.
- The statement said the issues are weighty and the Court might have set the case for argument, but denial is understandable because the new Fifteenth Court of Appeals has statewide jurisdiction and, under In re Sanofi-Aventis, may hear mandamus petitions like this one, so the Court awaits its written analysis of the Act's constitutionality.
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24-0250·Petition For Review
- The Texas Citizens Participation Act applies to the Lilith Fund's declaratory-judgment suit because it was "based on or in response to" Sadie Weldon's Rule 202 petition to depose the Fund's deputy director about possible Heartbeat Act violations.
- The Court reversed the court of appeals and remanded so it can decide the remaining steps of the TCPA analysis.
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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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24-0457·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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24-0573·Other
- The Texas attorney general has constitutional authority under Article IV, § 22 to file a quo warranto action seeking revocation of a corporation's charter based on alleged criminal acts, here knowingly harboring illegal aliens, and neither Business Organizations Code § 11.301(a)(5) nor Civil Practice and Remedies Code chapter 66 expressly limits it; on a motion for leave, the trial court asks only whether the petition states a cause of action, not how the evidence weighs.
- Neither RFRA, federal preemption nor vagueness justified denying leave to file, and Business Organizations Code §§ 12.151-.152, which let the attorney general demand corporate records "immediately," are not facially unconstitutional under City of Los Angeles v. Patel because "immediately" does not foreclose precompliance review, so the Court vacated the injunction against further records requests.
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24-0714·Certified Question
- Answering a Fifth Circuit certified question about the Texas Religious Services Clause (Art. I, § 6-a, adopted in 2021), the Court held that when the clause applies its force is absolute and categorical, barring government limits on religious services regardless of the government's interest or tailoring, but that its scope is not unlimited, and it does not extend to the government's preservation and management of publicly owned lands.
- The Court declined to define the clause's scope comprehensively, rejecting the City's view that it reaches only unequal treatment of religious services and the State's view that it covers only gatherings, and expressed no opinion on the plaintiffs' Free Exercise, freedom-of-worship, or Texas RFRA claims.
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24-1057·Petition For Review
- The home-equity forfeiture remedy in Article XVI, Section 50(a)(6)(Q)(x) applies only to a lender's breach of constitutionally mandated loan terms, not to every breach of a home equity loan agreement.
- A lender that overcharged about $10,000 in interest on a roughly $700,000 line of credit, then tendered the overcharge plus interest, did not forfeit the entire loan amount.
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24-1060·Petition For Review
- A group of cities sued the wrong defendant when they challenged, as unconstitutional gifts, state statutes capping the fees they may charge telecommunications companies for use of public rights-of-way, so the courts never had jurisdiction.
- The Court vacated the trial court's and court of appeals' judgments (and the court of appeals' opinion) without reaching the Gift Clause question.
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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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25-0673·Petition For Review
- Which statute of limitations governs a constitutional takings claim for real property: whether, as the court of appeals held, the ten-year adverse possession period applies to every such claim, or whether the adverse possession statute that fits the taking, here the twenty-five-year statute, governs.
- Whether the twenty-five-year statute applies to the State's alleged mass taking of royalty interests in more than 1,600 acres along a stretch of the Canadian River, whether the discovery rule or class-action tolling saves the landowners' claims, and whether the court of appeals should have remanded rather than rendering a take-nothing judgment for the State.
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25-0687·Mandamus
- The Court declined to use its original quo warranto jurisdiction to remove Texas House members who left the State on August 3, 2025 to break a quorum: the Constitution gives each House the power to compel attendance, and a quorum was restored within two weeks by political means without judicial intervention.
- The Court resolved neither whether a judicial remedy could ever be available nor any other question; Justice Sullivan concurred, suggesting how future quo warranto cases might proceed and warning that future quorum-breakers should be ready to be removed.
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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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25-0836·Petition For Review
- Whether the 2009 amendment to Article I, Section 17 of the Texas Constitution eliminated courts' deference to a city's public-use determination in condemnation cases, and whether a taking's "primary purpose" is a question of law or a jury question.
- Whether, under Government Code section 2206.001, a taking that lets a private company operate a for-profit "short-game practice area" at a municipal golf course is for a public park, or is barred as conferring a private benefit.
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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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25-1107·Mandamus
- The Court denied mandamus to a candidate for chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court whose Republican primary application was rejected for lacking fifty signatures from each court of appeals district, and formally reserved whether Election Code § 172.021(g) is facially unconstitutional.
- Mandamus was unwarranted because the challenge was brought at the last minute in an emergency of the relator's own making, he was unlikely to show a clear abuse of discretion on the merits, he did not provide his application as required, and the requested relief implicated political parties' associational rights.
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26-0171·Mandamus
- Did the Fifteenth Court of Appeals clearly abuse its discretion in refusing temporary relief under Rule 29.3 against Harris County's immigrant legal services fund and hotline, which the State says violate the Gift Clauses because the County cannot ensure its funds serve a predominant public purpose?
- Is the County's program, which pays private providers for representing low-income residents in deportation proceedings, a public benefit under the Gift Clause test, and does the State face irreparable harm or an adequate remedy through its pending appeal?
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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?
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26-0467·Mandamus
- May a qui tam relator sue under the Texas Medicaid Fraud Prevention Act when it is undisputed that the relator itself suffered no injury, or does it lack constitutional standing, and can it rely on the State's injury as an assignee?
- Does the Act's qui tam provision, which lets a private party proceed for the State without the State's participation, violate the separation of powers, and is mandamus an available remedy or is an appeal after final judgment adequate?
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26-0916·Mandamus
- A commissioners court's constitutional and statutory power to redraw precinct lines "from time to time" does not include the power to change the lines applicable to an election after that election has already begun.
- A primary election and its corresponding general election are one election for this purpose, so a county cannot switch to new precinct boundaries between the two.
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