Court Opinion

ID: 9678033
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:09:17.092247+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:01.452221
License: Public Domain

Justice HECHT, joined by Justice BAKER,
dissenting.
Texas law is firmly settled that only the Legislature can waive governmental immunity,1 and when it does so, it must use *11clear and unambiguous language.2
The Anti-Retaliation Law does not waive governmental immunity. First enacted in 1971,3 it currently provides in part:
§ 451.001. Discrimination Against Employees Prohibited
A person may not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against an employee because the employee has:
(1) filed a workers’ compensation claim in good faith;
(2) hired a lawyer to represent the employee in a claim;
(3) instituted or caused to be instituted in good faith a proceeding under [the Texas Workers’ Compensation Act]; or
(4) testified or is about to testify in a proceeding under [the Act].
§ 451.002. Remedies; Burden of Proof (a) A person who violates Section 451.001 is hable for reasonable damages incurred by the employee as a result of the violation.4
The Legislature has “adopted” the Anti-Retaliation Law and several other statutes in the Political Subdivisions Law,5 which applies the Texas Workers’ Compensation Act to certain governmental entities. Section 504.002(b) of the Political Subdivisions Law states:
For the purpose of applying the [Anti-Retaliation Law and certain other statutes], “employer” means “political subdivision.”6
In City of LaPorte v. Barfield, we held that this provision does not show a clear intent to waive immunity for anti-retaliation actions because the word “employer” nowhere appears in that statute.7 Specifically, we explained that
section 504.002(b) states that in applying the Anti-Retaliation Law, “employer” means “political subdivision”. As with the 1981 version of the Political Subdivisions Law, “political subdivision” is not equated with “person”, which has always been the operative word of the Anti-Retaliation Law. Absent this equation, it is not entirely clear whether the Legislature intended to prohibit political subdivisions from retaliatory discharge.8
The Legislature has also “adopted” the Anti-Retaliation Law and other statutes in the State Applications Act, which applies the Texas Workers’ Compensation Act to state employees not covered by more specific provisions. The State Applications Act and the Political Subdivisions Law originated and evolved in tandem. Both were first enacted in 1973 as part of the same legislation revising or replacing prior enactments making workers compensation coverage applicable to various governmental entities and private employers.9 Both were amended by the same bill passed in 198110 to “adopt” for the first time the Anti-Retaliation Law that had been enacted in 1971.11 Both articles were again *12amended together in 198912 and recodified in 1993.13 Section 15(b) of the 1989 version of the State Applications Act, which applies to the present case, states:
For purposes of [the Anti-Retaliation Law], the individual agency shall be considered the employer.
Purporting to follow Barfield, the Court holds today that this provision clearly and unambiguously does waive the State’s immunity for anti-retaliation actions.
In this case and in Barfield, the Court has thus construed two sister statutes related in origin, language, development, and purpose. One contains the sentence on the left below, the other contains the sentence on the right:
For the purpose of applying the [Anti-Retaliation Law and certain other statutes], “employer” means “political subdivision.”
For purposes of [the Anti-Retaliation Law], the individual agency shall be considered the employer,
The Court held in Barfield that the sentence on the left does not clearly and ambiguously waive governmental immunity. The Court holds today that the virtually identical sentence on the right does clearly and ambiguously waive governmental immunity. What justifies such disparate results?
Three things, says the Court. First, the reference in the sentence from the State Applications Act is to the Anti-Retaliation Law only, while the reference in the sentence from the Political Subdivisions Law is to the Anti-Retaliation Law and other statutes. In the Court’s words: “Unlike the cross-reference provision [in the Political Subdivisions Law], section 15(b) [of the State Applications Act] does not provide instructions for substituting one word for another in a series of statutes.”14 I cannot fathom what difference this makes. The Political Subdivisions Law is no less definite just because it equates “employer” and “political subdivision” in more than one statute. This argument is pure makeweight.
Second, the Court explains, the Legislature had a reason to define “employer” in the State Applications Act that it did not have in the Political Subdivisions Law, which was “distinguishing between general workers’ compensation claims, for which the director of the Workers’ Compensation Division [of the Attorney General’s Office] is the employer, and anti-retaliation claims, for which the individual agency is the employer.”15 This is all hypothetical, of course; no one involved in enacting and amending the State Applications Act ever actually said as much. And, the Court concedes in a footnote, the distinction it draws is no longer important because state agencies now act as the employer for purposes of compensation claims. But besides being made-up and no longer relevant, the Court’s explanation for the need to define “employer” in the State Applications Act leaves one fact unexplained: why did the Legislature also define “employer” in the Political Subdivisions Law? The Division did not act as the employer for political subdivisions. Why did the Legislature make the same change in both statutes, and more importantly, why did it intend by one sentence clearly and unambiguously to waive immunity, and yet not waive immunity by the almost identical words in the other statute? The Court’s postulated explanation simply will not hold.
Third, the Court says that if the sentence defining “employer” in the State Applications Act does not waive immunity then it has no purpose at all.16 But the very same' argument was made in Barfield about the same sentence in the Political *13Subdivisions Law, and the Court expressly rejected it.
This is the very sort of putative purpose argument we rejected in Duhart v. State, 610 S.W.2d 740 (Tex.1980). There we construed a statute providing compensation benefits to state highway department employees, which “adopted” a provision of the Workers’ Compensation Law preserving a cause of action for exemplary damages for the death of an employee caused by the employer’s gross negligence or by his intentional act or omission. We held that this adoption of a provision of one statute into another did not clearly and unambiguously waive the State’s immunity from liability for the alleged wrongful death of one of its employees. We reasoned that the exemplary damages provision did not create a cause of action in any event, but only preserved any existing action from preclusion by the Workers’ Compensation Law. As for why the Legislature would have “adopted” the exemplary damages provision in a statute which has as its sole purpose the authorization of compensation claims against the State if it did not also intend to allow such an action against the State, we could only surmise that “[i]t may be that a future Legislature will waive the governmental immunity of the State for exemplary damages.” Whatever the reason may have been, the adoption of the exemplary damages provision was not a clear and unambiguous waiver of immunity.
Duhart is sufficiently analogous to the present cases as to require the same conclusion.17
We were not able to suggest a better purpose for the statute in Barfield or Du-hart than we are here, but in those cases we nevertheless concluded that our inability to do so could not be translated into a clear and unambiguous legislative intent to waive governmental immunity. The Court cannot reach the opposite conclusion today without at the very least disavowing a part of the reasoning of Barfield and Duhart, though it refuses to do so.
The Court asserts that the State Applications Act “unambiguously states that agencies are covered ‘persons’ under the Anti-Retaliation Law”,18 but this is simply not true. The State Applications Act does not mention the word “person”, which has always been the operative word in the Anti-Retaliation Law, just as the Political Subdivisions Law does not mention “person”. Both define “employer”, which does not appear in the Anti-Retaliation Law. I grant that it is perfectly reasonable to argue that a “person” in the Anti-Retaliation Law must be an employer because he is discriminating against employees, and therefore both the State Applications Act and the Political Subdivisions Law suggests that political subdivisions and state agencies should be subject to anti-retaliation lawsuits. But we squarely held in Barfield that this suggestion was not enough for a clear and unambiguous waiver of immunity, and we must either reach the same conclusion in this case or disavow Barfield.
We did conclude in Barfield that the Legislature had waived immunity for anti-retaliation actions in the Political Subdivisions Law, but we did so based on a provision that the State Applications Act does not have. Section 504.008 requires that a person elect between his remedies provided by the Anti-Retaliation Law and the Whistleblower Act. The latter statute expressly waives immunity, and if the former did not, there would be nothing to elect. An election between an action that is barred and one that is not is a Hobson’s choice — no election at all. Thus, we concluded, the Legislature could not have acted rationally in requiring this election of remedies unless it intended that immunity was waived for both. This was the crux of our decision, as every court of appeals to *14construe the State Applications Act has recognized.19 No provision of the State Applications Act presents the same quandary.
This Court’s requirement that a waiver of immunity be clear and unambiguous is not hard to meet. The Legislature routinely uses language that leaves no doubt about its intent to waive immunity.20 Absent such unmistakable clarity, we have found a waiver only when a statutory provision that admits of no other rational construction — such as the Texas Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act, which mandates that governmental entities be joined in some cases21 and authorizes an award of attorney fees,22 and the Political Subdivisions Law in Barfield. But at this point we have drawn the line, until now, insisting that the Legislature make certain its intent in waiving immunity.
Today the Court lowers the bar, holding that the Legislature can waive governmental immunity if its intent to do so seems reasonable. Whatever merits this holding may have as a rule of law do not include fidelity to language and precedent. “Reasonable” is simply not the equivalent of “clear and unambiguous”, not by any stretch of language. And no case we have ever decided, certainly not Barfield, reaches so far to find a waiver of immunity as today’s decision. The Court has the prerogative to reduce the standard for determining waiver of governmental immunity that it has previously set, but it has no right to tax words with meanings they cannot bear. The Legislature may have decided, reasonably, plausibly, and even probably, that the State should be liable for retaliating against an employee who seeks workers’ compensation benefits just as a private person would be, but it has not said so with the clear and unambiguous language it has often used in many other contexts, and that until now we have required. As long as that is really to be the standard for waiver of immunity, judges’ ideas about reasonableness and policy cannot meet it.
I respectfully dissent.

. City of LaPorte v. Barfield, 898 S.W.2d 288, 291 (Tex.1995); Guillory v. Port of Houston *11Auth., 845 S.W.2d 812, 813 (Tex.), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 820, 114 S.Ct. 75, 126 L.Ed.2d 43 (1993); Lowe v. Texas Tech Univ., 540 S.W.2d 297, 298 (Tex. 1976).

. Barfield, 898 S.W.2d at 291; Duhart v. State, 610 S.W.2d 740, 742 (Tex.1980); Texas Prison Bd. v. Cabeen, 159 S.W.2d 523, 527-528 (Tex.Civ.App. — Beaumont 1942, writ ref’d); Welch v. State, 148 S.W.2d 876, 879 (Tex.Civ.App. — Dallas 1941, writ ref'd).

. Act of April 22, 1971, 62nd Leg., R.S., ch. 115, 1971 Tex. Gen. Laws 884.

. Tex. Labor Code §§ 451.001-.002(a).

. Tex. Labor Code § 504.002.

. Id. § 504.002(b).

. 898 S.W.2d at 298.

. Id.

. Act of May 10, 1973, 63rd Leg., R.S., ch. 88, §§ 16-17, 1973 Tex. Gen. Laws 187, 195-200.

. Act of May 31, 1981, 67th Leg., R.S., ch. 352, §§ 2-3, 1981 Tex. Gen. Laws 937, 937-938.

. Act of April 22, 1971, 62nd Leg., R.S., ch. 115, 1971 Tex. Gen. Laws 884.

. Act of December 12, 1989, 71st Leg., 2d C.S., ch. 1, §§ 15.44 & 15.47, 1989 Tex. Gen. Laws 1, 111-113.

. Act of May 12, 1993, 73rd Leg., R.S., ch. 269, 1993 Tex. Gen. Laws 987, 1236-1240, 1249-1252.

. Ante at 8.

. Ante at 7-8.

.Ante at 8.

. Barfield, 898 S.W.2d at 295-296.

. Ante at 8.

. Honhorst v. University of N. Texas, 983 S.W.2d 872, 874-875 (Tex.App. — Fort Worth 1998, no pet.); Southwest Texas State Univ. v. Enriquez, 971 S.W.2d 684, 686-687 (Tex. App. — Austin 1998, pet. denied); Carrillo v. Texas Tech Univ. Health Sciences Ctr., 960 S.W.2d 870, 872 (Tex.App. — El Paso 1997, pet. denied); Texas Dept. of Health v. Ruiz, 960 S.W.2d 714, 716-719 (Tex.App. — El Paso 1997, pet. denied).

. E.g., Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem.Code § 63.007(b) ("The state’s sovereign immunity to suit is waived_”); § 81.010 ("Governmental immunity to suit is waived and abolished....”); § 101.021 ("A governmental unit in the state is liable for_"); § 101.025 ("Sovereign immunity to suit is waived .... ”); § 103.002(a) ("... the state’s immunity from the suit is waived."); § 110.008(a) ("... sovereign immunity to suit and from liability is waived and abolished....’’); Tex. Educ.Code § 51.901(b) ("The defense of sovereign immunity shall not be available....”); Tex. Gov't Code § 554.0035 ("Sovereign immunity is waived and abolished to the extent of liability for the relief allowed under this chapter ....”); § 2007.004(a) ("Sovereign immunity to suit and liability is waived and abolished to the extent of liability created by this chapter.”); § 2007.024(a) ("Sovereign immunity to suit and liability is waived and abolished to the extent of liability created by this chapter.”); Tex. Nat. Res.Code § 52.035(c) ("The state waives its right to claim sovereign immunity in any action....”); Tex. Prop.Code § 74.506(c) ("The state’s immunity from suit without consent is abolished with respect to suits brought under this section.”).

. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem.Code §§ 37.004(a), 37.006(a)-(b).

. Id. § 37.009; Texas Educ. Agency v. Leeper, 893 S.W.2d 432, 445-446 (Tex. 1994).