Opinion ID: 2834394
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Legislature Enacted a Specific Alternative to Quo Warranto

Text: in Cases of Alleged Abuse of Subsection (h)(1) The Court says landowners are no worse off given the possibility of State-initiated quo warranto intervention. The Court reasons that annexation law is largely procedural and that our 1991 decision in Alexander Oil Co. v. City of Sequin declared quo warranto the exclusive mechanism to challenge improperly conducted annexations. [32] The Court’s analysis is unconvincing. The Legislature is presumed to understand extant law when it enacts legislation, [33] and if it intended that quo warranto remain a landowner’s sole remedy against post-1999 annexation abuses, it would not have enacted a statute that explicitly grants a private arbitration right. [34] This Court recently held that the “truest manifestation” of what lawmakers intended is what lawmakers enacted—the text they actually voted on—and the intent to supersede Alexander Oil is found in a statute that does exactly that. [35] We decided Alexander Oil in 1991 largely on the basis that the Legislature had not yet given private individuals a way to challenge annexations. Eight years later, the Legislature did so, granting landowners a defined arbitration right. [36] The Legislature, we must presume, understood the role of quo warranto in challenging annexation proceedings when it provided for arbitration in subsection ( i ), but the Legislature’s comprehensive overhaul makes no mention of quo warranto , much less retains the exclusivity of such relief. The City insists the Legislature’s failure to unequivocally declare that it was superseding Alexander Oil indicates it never intended to do so. We have never required such declarations, and Alexander Oil overtly disclaims the necessity for any such declaration: quo warranto , we said in that case, is the way to attack annexation irregularities unless the Legislature has “acted to expressly provide a private action.” [37] The Legislature did precisely that post- Alexander Oil . [38] This 1999 legislative exception to the general quo warranto rule provides a simple yet substantive remedy that is complete unto itself: the landowner petitions for inclusion in the three-year plan, and if the land is not added, the landowner may seek arbitration. Subsection ( i ) never states or suggests that quo warranto remains part of the legal landscape or that quo warranto must precede arbitration as an intermediate step. Finally, the City’s reliance on three courts of appeals’ decisions construing section 43.052 as strictly procedural, and thus subject only to quo warranto challenge, is misplaced. [39] While those courts held that quo warranto is the sole means to attack a city’s alleged violation of 43.052, none of those decisions considered the (h)(1) exemption or interpreted subsection ( i ), focusing instead on other portions of section 43.052. The remedy for abuse of the sparsely-populated-area exemption is arbitration, which subsection ( i ) clearly authorizes.