Supreme Court of Texas

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No. 20-0700

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City of Fort Worth, Texas,

Petitioner,

v.

Abdul Pridgen and Vance Keyes, 

Respondents

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On Petition for Review from the

Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas

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JUSTICE BLACKLOCK, concurring.

I agree with the Court that to make a “report” under the 

Whistleblower Act, “an employee must convey information, not just 

conclusions.” Ante at 12. I also agree with the Court that the plaintiffs’ 

disputed statements did not amount to the “provision of information, as 

opposed to mere opinions or suppositions.” Id. at 13. I disagree, 

however, with the Court’s rejection of the city’s other arguments about 

the Act’s requirements. If “an employee must convey information, not 

just conclusions,” and if the plaintiffs did not satisfy this requirement, 

then the case is over, and the Court need not opine on the validity of the 

city’s other arguments.
2

Setting aside whether the Court should reach the city’s other 

arguments at all, I am concerned the Court may not be correct to reject 

them. In particular, the city argues that employees whose job is to 

report on internal wrongdoing do not receive perpetual Whistleblower 

Act protection for making run-of-the-mill reports as part of their normal 

job duties. The city’s concern is quite understandable, from its 

perspective. If an internal-affairs investigator, whose job is to make 

reports of illegality, cannot be fired for making such reports, then how 

can he be fired for doing his job poorly? No other class of employees 

triggers automatic Whistleblower Act protection merely by doing their 

day-to-day job. Federal courts routinely respond to this concern by 

interpreting similarly worded statutes to require a report outside the 

normal course of the employee’s duties.1 Perhaps the Court is right that 

the text of Texas’s statute cannot support such a rule. But perhaps not, 

and resolving this issue is not necessary to decide the case.

I would also reserve for further consideration the city’s argument 

that a qualifying “report” must disclose information unknown to the 

recipient—or at least information the employee believes in good faith is 

1 See, e.g., Kahn v. Dep’t of Just., 618 F.3d 1306, 1313 (Fed. Cir. 2010) 

(“[A]n employee must communicate the information either outside the scope of 

his normal duties or outside of normal channels to qualify as a protected 

disclosure.”); Skare v. Extendicare Health Servs., Inc., 515 F.3d 836, 841 (8th 

Cir. 2008) (no whistleblower protection for “an employee whose job duties 

require him or her to ensure legal compliance”); Huffman v. Off. of Pers. Mgmt., 

263 F.3d 1341, 1352 (Fed. Cir. 2001) (“A law enforcement officer whose duties 

include the investigation of crime by government employees and reporting the 

results of an assigned investigation to his immediate supervisor is a 

quintessential example” of conduct not protected by the federal Act.).
3 

unknown to the recipient. In addition, I am skeptical of the Court’s 

statement that the Whistleblower Act protects those who “provide 

relevant, additional information that will help identify or investigate 

illegal conduct.” Id. at 15. The Act protects those who report “a violation 

of law,” and the Court’s reformulation adds verbiage that may prove 

problematic in future cases.

Finally, I do not agree with the Court that we should consider the 

ostensible “objective the Legislature sought to attain,” which the Court 

says is “ferreting out government mismanagement to protect the public.” 

Id. at 14. By declaring this the Act’s “purpose” and favoring 

interpretations of the statute that advance this “purpose,” the Court 

risks opening the door to expansive readings of the Whistleblower Act 

that may unduly interfere with the authority of politically accountable 

government officials to run their offices. The concern with 

“mismanagement in the public sector,” id., is not the only legitimate 

value at stake here. Hiring and firing employees is a core 

executive-branch prerogative. Undue legislative interference with 

executive-branch personnel decisions risks undermining the people’s 

ability to control government bureaucracy through democratic 

processes.

I respectfully concur in the judgment and join the Court’s opinion 

except for Part III.A.

 

 James D. Blacklock

 Justice

OPINION DELIVERED: May 27, 2022