The Texas Supreme Court has stepped into the legal battle over Austin’s multi-billion-dollar light rail project, ordering a lower court judge to officially rule on a jurisdictional challenge filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
In an opinion delivered Friday by Chief Justice James D. Blacklock, the high court stated that the trial court abused its discretion by trying to move forward with a trial without first deciding whether it actually had the authority to hear the case.
The dispute stems from a 2020 voter-approved ballot measure to raise property taxes for Austin’s “Project Connect” light rail system. To fund the project, the City of Austin formed the Austin Transit Partnership (ATP) to issue municipal bonds. After a group of taxpayers sued to stop the project, the city and ATP filed a lawsuit under the Expedited Declaratory Judgment Act (EDJA) to validate the bonds and tax collections.
Paxton intervened in the case, filing a “plea to the jurisdiction.” He argued that the court lacked jurisdiction under the EDJA because ATP is a local government corporation, not a recognized “issuer” of bonds under the specific terms of the statute.
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Under Texas law, if a government entity files a jurisdictional challenge and a judge denies it, the government has the right to an immediate interlocutory appeal, which automatically pauses all trial proceedings. Seeking to avoid a shutdown of the expedited case, attorneys for ATP asked Travis County District Judge Jessica Mangrum during a hearing to withhold her ruling and take the matter “under advisement” until after the trial.
According to the court record, ATP’s counsel told the judge: “If you deny the plea tomorrow this case gets put on ice because they have an interlocutory appeal that they will file and under that statute it says that the whole proceeding is abated.”
“So you’re asking me to not deny, but to take it under advisement and allow the trial to move forward and decide at trial whether or not they are correct…?” Judge Mangrum asked, later adding, “I keep repeating it because it’s a little odd to say please take this under advisement; shocking really.”
Despite her initial hesitation, the trial judge agreed to the request and called the case to trial without issuing a ruling. Paxton’s office attempted to appeal anyway, arguing the judge’s actions amounted to an implicit denial. The Fifteenth Court of Appeals dismissed that appeal because no formal written order existed.
The Texas Supreme Court agreed that Paxton could not technically appeal a non-existent order, but chose to treat the state’s petition as a request for a writ of mandamus—an order forcing a government official to fulfill their duty.
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“Nothing about this scenario is as it should be,” Chief Justice Blacklock wrote in the opinion. “A court may not decline to rule on challenges to its jurisdiction, which should always be addressed before proceeding to the merits. A court may not withhold a ruling on the government’s properly presented plea to the jurisdiction in order to prevent the government from appealing. And the government may not appeal from an interlocutory order that does not exist.”
The high court emphasized that while the automatic stay rule can be used strategically by the state to cause delays, judges cannot simply bypass the law for the sake of efficiency.
“Under no circumstances may a court deny a governmental unit its interlocutory appellate rights by declining to resolve a properly presented jurisdictional challenge,” the opinion stated.
The Supreme Court conditionally granted the writ of mandamus, ordering the trial court to issue a formal ruling to grant or deny Paxton’s plea. The high court noted it was expressing no view on the actual merits of Paxton’s underlying jurisdictional arguments. Justice John P. Devine did not participate in the decision.
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