The Texas Supreme Court says the creation of the state's newest appeals court is constitutional — clearing the way for a Dallas County lawsuit against the state's health agency to land in front of a Gov. Greg Abbott-appointed court.
Dallas County and Sheriff Marian Brown sued the Texas Health and Human Services Commission last year, accusing the state agency of not accepting legally incompetent inmates at state hospitals in a timely manner.
Mentally ill inmates who are deemed incompetent to stand trial must have their competency restored in psychiatric care before criminal proceedings. However, that wait list is long in Texas, which means those detainees must wait for state hospital space in county jails for months or even years.
Dallas commissioners sent a letter to Attorney General Ken Paxton and HHSC two months prior requesting more beds for hundreds of inmates in need of competency restoration. In October 2022, 6% of the jail population in Dallas County was waiting to be transferred to state hospitals.
A Travis County district court rejected HHSC’s request to dismiss the case, so the state appealed to the Third Court of Appeals. But when the 15th Court of Appeals starts taking cases on Sept. 1, all civil litigation involving the state, challenges to the constitutionality of state laws and appeals from business courts must be transferred to the new court — including Dallas County's suit.
The county asked the state’s highest court to put that transfer on hold. It argued the 15th appellate court's existence is unconstitutional for several reasons, including that the court has judicial power over the entire state as opposed to a smaller district, and its jurisdiction is defined by subject matter and not geography.
Dallas County also took issue with the fact that the court's new justices — three of whom the governor recently appointed — will take the bench this year, but their positions won’t be up for election until November 2026, skipping this year’s general election.
Abbott signed Senate Bill 1045 to create the five-justice appeals court, and its constitutionality has been called into question ever since. Proponents say statewide cases should be heard by a statewide court, and an additional court would take the heavy caseload off other overburdened appeals courts.
Attorneys like Malcolm Whittaker also say a centralized court for business case appeals will lead to more consistent rulings on complex business law issues, helping reassure companies who want to incorporate in Texas.
“What business people want is predictability, right?” Whittaker told KERA News. “What is the rule? If I do X, am I in compliance with statute Y?”
But critics say creating the 15th Court of Appeals was a political move that would help the state avoid Democrat judges in major cities and get cases against Texas thrown out early in the appeals process.
Regardless of the motivations behind the court’s creation, the Texas Supreme Court rejected all Dallas County’s arguments that the court’s existence is unconstitutional.
“(T)he Fifteenth Court’s justices will be electorally accountable to the citizens of every court of appeals district from which a case would otherwise come,” reads the opinion from Justice Evan Young. “It is hard to regard this circumstance as anything but a lesser intrusion into the ordinary judicial system than transferring an appeal to a court with no ties whatsoever to the transferor region.”
Texas Supreme Court justices, however, didn’t touch on the merits of Dallas County’s case against the state.
Ashley Harris with the ACLU of Texas, which filed an amicus brief in support of Dallas County, said the Texas Legislature and the state Supreme Court both ignored the language of the Texas Constitution. That has negative implications for both Democrats and Republicans, she said.
“This is part of a trend that we’re seeing of a consolidation of power statewide to ignore regional voters when those are the structures that are in place in Texas,” she said.
Neither the Office of the Attorney General nor attorneys for Dallas County immediately responded to requests for comment.
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