Court Opinion

ID: 9678032
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:09:17.087689+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:01.448333
License: Public Domain

Justice OWEN,
concurring.
Try as it might, the Court cannot distinguish our holding in Barfield that the Legislature did not waive sovereign immunity when it “adopted” the Anti-Retaliation Law in the Political Subdivisions Law and said that for purposes of the Anti-Retaliation Law, “employer” means “political subdivision.” City of LaPorte v. Barfield, 898 S.W.2d 288, 295 (Tex.1995). The dissent ably exposes the flaws in the Court’s reasoning today that the State did waive sovereign immunity when it similarly “adopted” the Anti-Retaliation Law in the State Applications Act and said that for purposes of the Anti-Retaliation Law, the individual agency shall be considered the employer. Because the Court refuses to acknowledge that one of our holdings in Bayfield cannot be reconciled with its holding in this case, I cannot join the Court’s opinion. The Court should be forthright in its discussion of Barfield and should say that we erred in that aspect of our analysis in Bayfield.
On reflection, I believe that the Legislature did adequately express its intent to waive sovereign immunity for purposes of the Anti-Retaliation Law when it adopted that law as part of the Political Subdivisions Law. There could have been no other reasonable basis for including the language that it did in the Political Subdivisions Law. Our decision in Barfield was simply wrong on this score. But we should not repeat that error by holding that very similar language in the State Applications Act does not waive immunity. Accordingly, I join in the Court’s judgment.
The Court’s machinations in its failed attempt to distinguish Barfield are an implicit insult to the three courts of appeals who faithfully applied our Barfield analysis to the State Applications Act and held that immunity was not waived. See Honhorst v. University of North Texas, 983 S.W.2d 872, 874-75 (Tex.App. — Fort Worth 1998, no pet.); Southwest Texas State Univ. v. Enriquez, 971 S.W.2d 684, 686-7 (Tex. App. — Austin 1998, pet. denied); Carrillo v. Texas Tech Univ. Health Sciences Ctr., 960 S.W.2d 870, 871-72, 875 (Tex.App. — El Paso 1997, pet. denied); Texas Dept. of Health v. Ruiz, 960 S.W.2d 714, 716-19 (Tex.App. — El Paso 1997, writ denied). We should be candid and admit that it was this Court that strayed in Barfield, not the courts of appeals in applying Barfield.