Opinion ID: 2812467
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The “Functional Equivalent” Requirement

Text: 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 __.