Court Opinion

ID: 9764791
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:40:14.407574+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:01.665940
License: Public Domain

LEVY, Justice,
concurring.
I agree with the majority’s reasoning and disposition of the mandamus application, which vacates , the trial judge’s order compelling discovery, but because of the overriding importance of a free press, it seems appropriate to observe that Texas law grants protection, as well as does the federal constitution’s First Amendment, from *473compelled disclosure of information that the press obtains through its investigations.
When addressing the issue of a reporter’s privilege as a matter of state constitutional law, we are not obligated to follow the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment. As the majority noted in Branzberg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. at 706, 92 S.Ct. at 2669 (1972):
... we are powerless to bar state courts from responding in their own way and construing their own constitutions so as to recognize a newsman’s privilege, either qualified or absolute.
Our Texas Constitution’s “free press” provision is thus not a mere shadow of the comparable First Amendment. No matter how eloquent or persuasive its analysis of the federal constitution may be, the United States Supreme Court will not presume that the Supreme Court of Texas (or lower Texas Courts) will modify its interpretation of Texas law whenever the U.S. Supreme Court interprets comparable federal law differently. If a state court judgment is premised on an adequate state ground, that ground must be presumed independent unless the state court suggests otherwise.1
Tex.Const. art. 1, sec. 8 is Texas’s guarantee of freedom of the press. It provides:
no law shall ever be passed curtailing the liberty of speech or of the press.” This language is sweeping, and deliberately so. In its application, I think it means that before a reporter can be ordered to turn over material acquired in the investigation and dissemination of a news story, the litigant seeking the information must show more than that the material be highly significant and relevant, necessary to his claim, and not available from other sources. The litigant should demonstrate the existence of a compelling need for the information, which should not be required to be predicated on economic interest alone.
A free press promotes, or ideally should promote, dissemination of the widest possible range of fact and opinion in an open society such as ours. To carry out its prescribed role effectively, the press must be relatively unrestrained in acquiring and compiling information, modified, inter alia, by the individual’s rights to privacy and dignity. The likelihood or even possibility of court-ordered disclosure of confidential sources diminishes the flow of news by encouraging self-censorship by newsgath-erers and by dissuading potential informants from divulging their information. United States v. Caldwell, 408 U.S. 665, 711, 720, 92 S.Ct. 2646, 2686, 2691, 33 L.Ed.2d 626 (1972) (Douglas, J., dissenting) (holding that a reporter should have an absolute privilege to withhold the identity of a source).
Applying this strict standard would involve minimal evidentiary loss, encourage the necessary flow of information, and, perhaps even more, strengthen the protection of important but confidential sources.
Thus, I fully concur in the majority opinion, adding this only for emphasis.

. "[W]e will not review a judgment of a state court that rests on an adequate and independent state ground. Nor will we review one until the fact that it does not do so appears of record.” Herb v. Pitcairn, 324 U.S. 117, 128, 65 S.Ct. 459, 464, 89 L.Ed. 789 (1945).