Opinion ID: 2812467
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Court’s Interpretation

Text: The Court begins its analysis by noting that the term “supported” can have several different meanings. Ante at __. Because “supported by” in the clause at issue refers specifically to “public funds,” the Court concludes that the Act focuses solely on monetary support. Ante at __. The Court then proceeds to identify two different requirements that must each exist for a private entity to receive monetary “support,” which I will refer to as the “sustenance” requirement and the “functional equivalent” requirement. Ante at ___ (agreeing with Partnership’s contention that definition only includes “entities that were created or exist to carry out government functions and whose existence are maintained in whole or in part with public funds”). Although the Court asserts that it is simply applying a “plain language” approach to construing the statute, ante at ___, and is not relying on any “extra-textual analytical construct,” ante at ___, neither of the Court’s two requirements appears anywhere in the statute’s language. I do not agree that the Act’s language “unambiguously” supports the judicial insertion of either requirement into its definition of a “governmental body.”
Addressing the first requirement, the Court says “supported” can mean (and here must mean) “sustenance, maintenance, or both.” Ante at __. The Court provides this as the “maintenance” definition of “supported”: “to pay the costs of: maintain; to supply with the 21 means of maintenance (as lodging, food or clothing) or to earn or furnish funds for maintaining[.]” Ante at __ (quoting WEBSTER’S THIRD NEW INT’L DICTIONARY 2297 (2002)). The Court then concludes that “supported” cannot mean “maintenance” in this context because otherwise the definition would include “any private entity that received any public funds,” and “even a paper vendor with hundreds of clients would qualify as a ‘governmental body’ merely by virtue of selling office supplies to a single state office.” Ante at __. In contrast to the “maintenance” definition, the Court gives this “sustenance” definition of “supported”: “to provide a basis for the existence or subsistence of: serve as the source of material or immaterial supply, nourishment, provender, fuel, raw material, or sustenance of.” Ante at __ (quoting WEBSTER’S THIRD NEW INT’L DICTIONARY at 2297). The Court thus distinguishes between the “maintenance” meaning of “supported” and the “sustenance” meaning of “supported” and concludes that in the context of the Act, “supported by” can only mean the latter, so the Act applies only to private entities “sustained, at least in part, by public funds, meaning they would not perform the same or similar services without public funds.” Ante at __. Although the Court reads far more into these two definitions of “support” than I find there, as explained below, I generally agree that the term “support” must refer here to monies paid as general funds to sustain the recipient, rather than funds paid as consideration for specific goods or services. But the Court goes far beyond that principle today, and holds that an entity is “supported in whole or in part by public funds” only if the entity cannot survive without those funds. As a result, the Court writes the words “in part” completely out of the statutory definition. To be sure, the Court creates the appearance that it is actually enforcing the statute as written by referring to the “supported . . . in part” language several times in its opinion: 22 • “requires us to decide whether the term ‘supported’ encompasses private entities . . . sustained—in whole or in part—by [public] funds,” ante at ___ (emphasis added); • “‘supported’ . . . unambiguously includes only those entities at least partially sustained by public funding,” ante at __ (emphasis added); • “[the Partnership] is not wholly or partially sustained by public funds,” ante at ___ (emphasis added); • “the [Act] applies only to entities acting as the functional equivalent of a governmental body that are ‘sustained’ at least in part, by public funds,” ante at __ (emphasis added); and • “we define ‘supported in whole or in part by public funds’ to include only those private entities or their sub-parts sustained, at least in part, by public funds,” ante at ___ (emphases added). But despite these lip-service payments to the statute’s language, the Court repeatedly holds that an entity (or any part, section, or portion of an entity) that receives public funds as sustenance (as opposed to maintenance) is not a governmental body unless it cannot survive and pursue its mission without those funds: • “defining ‘supported’ as ‘sustenance’ ensures that only an entity, or its ‘part, section or portion,’ whose existence is predicated on the continued receipt of government funds would qualify as a ‘governmental body,’” ante at __; • “[t]o be ‘sustained’ by public funds suggests the existence of a financially dependent relationship between the governmental body and a private entity or its subdivision,” ante at __; • “a private entity would qualify under a financially dependent construction of ‘supported’ if it could not pursue its mission and objectives without the receipt of public funds, even if that funding only partially financed the entity’s endeavors. In short, an entity ‘supported’ by public funds would not just receive government funds; it would require them to operate in whole or in part,” ante at __; • “[the Partnership] is not ‘supported’ by public funds because it receives only a small portion of its revenue from government contracts[, a]nd even if these government contracts were eliminated, it could continue to operate given the substantial revenue derived from other non-governmental sources,” ante at ___; 23 • “the statute encompasses only those private entities dependent on the public fisc to operate as a going concern,” ante at ___; and • “An entity . . . that does not depend on any particular revenue source to survive—public or private—is not sustained even in part by government funds,” ante at __. The Court thus holds that a private entity that receives public funds can be a governmental body under the Act only if it cannot “survive” or “exist” or “pursue its mission and objectives” without those public funds, even if those funds are just “one of several contributing sources.” I disagree. An entity that is “sustained” (as the Court uses that word) by funds it receives from several different sources is sustained “in part” by the funds from each of those sources, even if it could survive and pursue its mission without the funds from any one source. The Court asserts that “sustenance implies that if the government ceased to provide financial support, the entity would be unable to meet its financial obligations.” Ante at ___. But even if that were true,8 “sustenance in part” implies the exact opposite. If “part” of an entity’s “sustenance” comes from one source, it is “sustained in part” by that source even if it could survive without that part. The Court attempts to justify its “surviv[al]” requirement by suggesting that the statute’s “‘in part’ language may envision a multi-division entity that does business with the government, but not uniformly and not across all units.” Ante at ___. “For instance,” the Court explains, if a “large corporation” has a “subdivision” that “is wholly funded by government contracts,” but the 8 The Court fails to identify any dictionary that defines “supported” to mean financially dependent upon for its very existence. See ante at __. While there are many definitions of “support” that refer to “sustenance or maintenance” or even “a basis for the existence or subsistence of,” see ante at __ (emphasis added), none of the definitions require an absolute dependence, and in any event, the statute’s definition expressly excludes such a requirement by referring to support “in part.” 24 government funds are only “a relatively small portion of the corporation’s total revenue,” the corporation “may be said to be supported ‘in part’ by public funds.” Ante at ___. This illustration confuses the statute’s reference to “supported in part” with its reference to the “part, section, or portion” of an entity. The statute provides that the “part, section, or portion” of an entity is a governmental body if it is “supported in whole or in part by public funds.” TEX. GOV’T CODE § 552.003(1)(A)(xii). The Court is correct that, if one subdivision of a large corporation is “supported in whole . . . by public funds,” then the corporation itself is “supported . . . in part by public funds.” But the statute permits the corporation to limit the Act’s application to the subdivision by showing that only that subdivision (i.e., that “part, section, or portion” of the corporation) is “supported in whole or in part” by public funds. The illustration the Court “conceptualize[s]” has nothing to do with the Court’s “surviv[al]” requirement. A relevant illustration is this: even if only 5% of the funds that support the Court’s hypothetical corporate subdivision were public funds, the subdivision would still be “supported in part” by those funds, and would thus be a governmental body under the Act’s plain language. An entity “supported . . . in part by public funds” is a governmental body, regardless of whether it could “survive” or “pursue its mission” without those funds. See id. The Court’s construction reads this language out of the Act by requiring the whole of the entity to live or die by the public fisc.
The Court also holds that an entity is not “supported in whole or in part by public funds” unless it is “acting as the functional equivalent of a governmental body,” ante at __, and providing “services traditionally considered governmental prerogatives or responsibilities,” ante 25 at __. As with its first requirement, the Court does not derive this requirement from the statutory definition at issue. Subsection (xii) expressly identifies several types of entities that typically are not public (or governmental) entities, including an “organization,” a “committee,” an “institution,” and—importantly, here—a “corporation.” The Act says such private entities are governmental bodies if they are “supported in whole or in part by public funds,” not if they are acting as the “functional equivalent” of a governmental body or performing traditional government responsibilities. TEX. GOV’T CODE § 552.003(1)(A)(xii). The Court, however, asserts three bases for imposing this requirement: (1) the Act’s “stated purpose”; (2) the statute’s omission of “any broad reference to private entities”; and (3) the “scope and nature of the eleven other types of entities more clearly described as a ‘governmental body’ in the same provision,” ante at __. I do not agree that any of these justifies writing the Court’s “functional equivalent” requirement into the statute. First, the Court suggests that requiring a private entity to be the “functional equivalent” of a governmental body is necessary to ensure that our construction of “supported” is “compatible with” the Act’s “stated purpose.” Ante at ___ This “stated purpose,” the Court explains, is to provide the public with “complete information about the affairs of government and the official acts of public officials and employees” to “allow the public to ‘retain control over the instruments they have created.’” Ante at __ (quoting TEX. GOV’T CODE § 552.001(a)). Although the Court makes no effort to explain why this purpose necessitates or implies the “functional equivalent” requirement, I presume the Court finds hidden meaning in the purpose statement’s reference to the “affairs of government,” the “acts of public officials and employees,” and the “instruments . . . created,” as if the words I have emphasized exclude any purpose to require 26 disclosure of information held by a private entity. But to emphasize a different word, the statute’s purpose is to provide “complete information” about those affairs, acts, and instruments. The Legislature may have believed that the only way to ensure the public has “complete” information about what their government is doing is to treat some private entities as governmental bodies under the Act. Whatever we may presume about what the Legislature may have “believed,” what the Legislature “said” was that “governmental body” includes any entity “supported in whole or in part by public funds,” not any entity that is the “functional equivalent” of a governmental body. As a second reason for requiring a private entity to be the “functional equivalent” of a governmental body, the Court asserts that the definition does not include “any broad reference to private entities.” Ante at ___.9 Assuming that the Legislature “carefully omitted” any such “broad reference,” and presuming that the Legislature “purposefully selected” this omission, the Court concludes that the definition, “as applied to private entities, must be filtered through the Act’s purpose and function of allowing access to instrumentalities of government,” and thus “only applies to private entities acting as the functional equivalent of the government.” Ante at ___. Respectfully, I fail to follow the Court’s logic. It might be logical to conclude from the omission of any “broad reference” to private entities that the Legislature did not intend to include all private entities as “governmental bodies.” But it is illogical to conclude that the omission of a “broad reference” somehow indicates which private entities the Legislature intended to include 9 This assertion is simply wrong. The very definition at issue “broadly refers” to private entities by using a string of particularly broad terms to reference private entities of all types: “the part, section, or portion of an organization, corporation, commission, committee, institution, or agency that spends or is supported in whole or in part by public funds[.]” TEX. GOV’T CODE § 552.001(1)(A)(xii). The “omission” on which the Court relies simply does not exist. 27 and which it did not. And it is simply preposterous to conclude that the omission somehow indicates that they intended to include “only those entities acting as the functional equivalent of the government.” Ante at ___. We need not engage in such sophistry, because the statute tells us which private entities the Legislature intended to include as governmental bodies: those that are “supported in whole or in part by public funds.” TEX. GOV’T CODE § 552.003(1)(A)(xii). The Court finds support for its judicially created functional equivalent test only by manufacturing a “broad reference” to stack upon its misconstruction of the Act’s “stated purpose.” For the third (though “not dispositive”) reason for requiring a private entity to be the “functional equivalent” of a governmental body, the Court relies on the “canon of statutory construction known as noscitur a sociis.” Ante at __. This canon provides “that a word is known by the company it keeps.” Fiess v. State Farm Lloyds, 202 S.W.3d 744, 750 (Tex. 2006) (quoting Gustafson v. Alloyd Co., 513 U.S. 561, 575 (1995)). It “directs that similar terms be interpreted in a similar manner,” TGS-NOPEC Geophysical Co. v. Combs, 340 S.W.3d 432, 441 (Tex. 2011), but there is no similarity between the words in definition (xii)—an “organization” or “corporation” that is “supported in whole or in part by public funds”—and those in the preceding definitions. If definition (xii) provided “general” language, following “specific and particularized enumerations” in the first eleven definitions, then we would “treat the general words as limited and apply them only to the same kind or class of [things] as those expressly mentioned.” City of San Antonio v. City of Boerne, 111 S.W.3d 22, 29 (Tex. 2003). But definition (xii) uses specific language, inherently different than the language of the other definitions, and thus refers to something specific, not just a catch-all to conclude the preceding definitions. Under noscitur a sociis, we should look to the words “immediately surrounding” the phrase “supported by,” which 28 include the words “public funds” and, importantly, “in whole or in part” (which the Court ignores). See BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY 1224 (10th ed. 2014) (defining noscitur a sociis as “a canon of construction holding that the meaning of an unclear word or phrase, esp. one in a list, should be determined by the words immediately surrounding it”). Even if the Court were applying the doctrine of noscitur a sociis correctly here, that doctrine cannot be used to render express statutory language meaningless. “If . . . the specific terms exhaust the class of items enumerated in the statute, it must be presumed that any generic term that follows must refer to items transcending the class, since a contrary construction ‘would contravene the more important rule of construction that all words are to be given effect.’” Shipp v. State, 331 S.W.3d 433, 437 (Tex. Crim. App. 2011) (quoting 2A NORMAN J. SINGER & J.D. SHAMBIE SINGER, SUTHERLAND STATUTORY CONSTRUCTION § 47:21 at 390–91 (7th ed. 2007)); see also Columbia Med. Ctr. of Las Colinas, Inc. v. Hogue, 271 S.W.3d 238, 256 (Tex. 2008) (“The Court must not interpret the statute in a manner that renders any part of the statute meaningless or superfluous.”); City of San Antonio, 111 S.W.3d at 29 (rejecting construction that would render some statutory language unnecessary and citing Spence v. Fenchler, 180 S.W. 597, 601 (Tex. 1915), for the proposition that “[i]t is an elementary rule of construction that, when possible to do so, effect must be given to every sentence, clause, and word of a statute so that no part thereof be rendered superfluous or inoperative”). We must “read the statute contextually,” Office of Att’y Gen., 422 S.W.3d at 629, considering the relevant language in the context of the statute as a whole, rather than as “isolated provisions,” TGS–NOPEC Geophysical, 340 S.W.3d at 439, and endeavoring to “giv[e] effect to every word, clause, and sentence,” In re Office of Att’y Gen., 422 S.W.3d 623, 629 (Tex. 2013), so that none of the language is rendered 29 superfluous, see Crosstex Energy Servs., L.P. v. Pro Plus, Inc., 430 S.W.3d 384, 390 (Tex. 2014). Because the Court’s construction renders the phrase “in whole or in part” meaningless, I do not agree that definition (xii) includes “organizations” and “corporations” only if they “function as quasi-public” entities. Ante at __.