Court Opinion

ID: 9773826
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:00:24.469366+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:58.338578
License: Public Domain

Justice SPECTOR,
joined by Justice CORNYN, concurring.
In this cause, we consider whether Charles McKinney could have brought state-law claims against a Texas school district in an earlier federal lawsuit. I agree with Justice Gonzalez that San Antonio Independent School District, like every other independent school district in Texas, is an arm of the state, although I disagree with him as to the judgment that the Court should render in this ease. Because the district court in the earlier federal lawsuit would have been bound by precedent that would not afford Eleventh Amendment immunity to the district, I concur in the Court’s judgment. The majority’s lengthy analysis is, however, purely advisory.
At the time of McKinney’s federal lawsuit, the Fifth Circuit had already decided that Texas school districts are not entitled to Eleventh Amendment immunity. See Lopez v. Houston Indep. Sch. Dist., 817 F.2d 351, 353 (5th Cir.1987). The Fifth Circuit’s hold*285ing in Lopez is clear: “The [Houston Independent School District] is a local governmental body ... sufficiently distinct from the state to be outside the eleventh amendment.” Lopez, 817 F.2d at 353. This decision is binding precedent within the Fifth Circuit, and the federal district court in this case would have had no choice other than to follow it. Even if a majority of this Court were to disagree with the Fifth Circuit and conclude that a school district is an arm of the state, the federal district court would not have had the benefit of our views at the time McKinney’s case was before it.
Although the majority acknowledges that Eleventh Amendment immunity is a question of federal law, 936 S.W.2d at 282, the opinion simply ignores a dispositive federal precedent. In this case, Lopez should have ended this Court’s inquiry. Accordingly, I concur in the Court’s judgment, but I do not join its opinion.