Justia Education Law Opinion Summaries

Articles Posted in Texas Supreme Court
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LTTS Charter School ("LTTS") was an open-enrollment school that retained C2 Construction, Inc. ("C2") to build school facilities at a site Universal Academy had leased. C2 filed a breach of contract suit and Universal Academy filed a plea to the jurisdiction claiming immunity from suit. The trial court denied the plea and Universal Academy brought an interlocutory appeal under Section 51.014(a)(8) of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code. In the court of appeals, C2 moved to dismiss the interlocutory appeal, arguing that Universal Academy was note entitled to one because it was not a governmental unit under the Torts Claims Act ("Act"), Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code 101.001(3)(D). At issue was whether an open-enrollment charter school was a governmental unit as defined by Section 101.001(3)(D) and thus, able to take an interlocutory appeal from a trial court's denial of its plea to the jurisdiction. The court held that open-enrollment charter schools were governmental units for the Act purposes because the Act defined government unit broadly to include any other institution, agency, or organ of government derived from state law; the Education Code defined open-enrollment charters schools as part of the public school system, which were created in accordance with the laws of the state, subject to state laws and rules governing public schools and, together with governmental traditional public schools, have the primary responsibility for implementing the state's system of public education; and the Legislature considered open-enrollment charter schools to be governmental entities under a host of other laws outside the Education Code. Accordingly, because Universal Academy was a governmental unit under the Act, the court of appeals had jurisdiction to hear its interlocutory appeal under Section 51.014(a)(8).