Just in time for its grand opening.
The Texas Supreme Court defended the state legislature’s creation of a statewide district court of appeals, holding the new court is constitutional.
Dallas County and Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown challenged the constitutionality of the Fifteenth Court of Appeals, which opens for business Sept. 1.
Dallas County sued the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and its officers in Travis County over a dispute about the state’s alleged failure to take custody of criminal defendants who have been adjudicated incompetent to stand trial.
The county also HHSC’s failure imposes unjustified costs on the county, which must retain custody and pay for the inmates’ treatment.
The trial court denied the state’s plea to jurisdiction, leading to an appeal in the Third District Court of Appeals.
Justice Evan Young, responding for the court on a petition for writ of mandamus, said it was too late for procedural reasons to resolve the appeal before its mandatory transfer to the Fifteenth District.
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The county’s main argument was that the state constitution requires every court of appeals district is limited to a subdivision of the state’s territory.
Disagreeing with the county, Young’s response established the high courts jurisdiction and reached the merits of whether the new court is constitutionally structured. Young concluded the constitution includes grants of legislative discretion over the structure and jurisdiction of the courts of appeals.
The Fifteenth District is the legislature’s first attempt in almost 60 years to create a new intermediate appellate court, Young noted.
While the county argues it can’t be constitutional because it’s composed of all counties in the state, Young said their argument hinges on the words “divide” and “district.”
Taking these definitions, nothing in the phrase ‘the state shall be divided into courts of appeals districts’ threatens the Fifteenth Court’s constitutionality, Young said.
“‘The state’ has been ‘divided.’ The legislature immediately fulfilled its duty to ‘separate’ the intermediate court system ‘into parts,’ which for over 130 years has meant geographic regions with various levels of overlap,” Young wrote.
Referring to “district,” Young said the word can be used for statewide, state-run bodies, too. At-large districts, Young said, are hardly unknown, either—a city or other polity might have multiple districts that carve up the city alongside at-large districts that cover the entirety of the jurisdiction.
See here for some background. Justice Young’s reasoning seems like a bit of sophistry to me, but it’s not so egregious that I’m in danger of my hair catching fire. I was expecting a challenge to the legality of this court and its sibling the business court, but I thought it would be on the grounds that they needed to be created via constitutional amendment, and not a regular law. That wasn’t the argument Dallas County went with, for better or worse. I kind of suspect that SCOTx would have found a reason to uphold it regardless, but you never know. As this court becomes official on September 1, I am not sure there’s enough time for further challenges. I think we’re stuck with it, which means that we’re going to need to put some effort into winning elections for its benches. At least there will now be more things for the ambitious lawyers (and sitting judges not up for election that year) to run for.