Court Opinion

ID: 9692364
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 15:52:33.007413+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:34.259503
License: Public Domain

BRISTER, C.J.,
concurring.
I think we have gone off track here. This is not a jurisdictional case. In Essenburg v. Dallas County, the Texas Supreme *323Court distinguished between “exhaustion” and “presentment” statutes:
• statutes requiring exhaustion of administrative remedies confer jurisdiction upon an administrative agency to resolve disputed issues of fact and policy;
• statutes requiring presentment give a governmental defendant notice of the claim and an opportunity to settle it without litigation.
988 S.W.2d 188, 189 (Tex.1998) (per curiam). Because of these different purposes, failure to comply with the former is jurisdictional, but failure to comply with the latter is not. Id.
Section 554.006 requires a claimant to initiate but not complete a grievance. Thus, it falls squarely in the presentment category. Even assuming Ms. Rivera failed to initiate a grievance, the proper remedy would be to make her wait the statutory sixty days. Because that is what the trial court did, I would affirm, whether or not she properly initiated a grievance.
Treating this issue as jurisdictional merely prolongs this dispute. The majority takes Ms. Rivera’s allegations as true today, but that will no longer be the case if the school district pursues its plea by summary judgment or at trial. See Bland Independent School Dist. v. Blue, 34 S.W.3d 547, 554 (Tex.2000) (holding court should hear evidence as necessary to determine subject-matter jurisdiction). Will our subject-matter jurisdiction evaporate if a jury finds Rivera did not make the contacts she alleges? This is precisely why the Supreme Court jettisoned the no-sub-jeet-matter-jurisdiction approach to presentment prerequisites like this one. See Dubai Petroleum Co. v. Kazi, 12 S.W.3d 71, 75-76 (Tex.2000) (holding compliance with statutory prerequisites should no longer be addressed as a matter of subject-matter jurisdiction that could render judgment void).
Moreover, treating this issue as jurisdictional defeats the Legislature’s purpose. Instead of getting sixty days to try to resolve this case without litigation, the parties have spent more than a year fighting over what Ms. Rivera did or failed to do. I do not believe the Legislature intended to make this a game; the statutory deadlines had a purpose besides tossing whistleblowers out of court for filing too early.
I agree with the Court that the trial court did not err. But I would not keep this ball up in the air any longer. Thus, I concur only in the Court’s judgment.