Don Cruse

This morning’s orders list brought the first grants under the Texas Supreme Court’s new petition rules.

My website has been tracking these new petitions (more on that below), so I’ve been watching for the first grant. My hope had been that the first grants might answer some questions about how the internal process might be working (and, more selfishly, give me some material for my CLE talk in June).

Here is what I’ve been tracking, and where today’s grants fit in.

The two tracks of cases moving through the Court

The defining feature of the Court’s new petition system is that it would allow these grant-or-deny decisions to be made off the petition and initial response, much like the U.S. Supreme Court handles its own petitions.1

But the Court is not starting from a blank slate. It begins with a full docket of its regular cases, accumulated under the old system.

For now, and the foreseeable future, the Texas Supreme Court will therefore be working on two tracks internally. Every case that was already on its docket before this year continues along under the old system. But the petitions filed since January 1st are under a brand-new set of rules.2 As I write on May 1st, there are already far more total petitions pending in the Court under its new rules than still remain under the old rules.3 But, as you’d also expect, the cases under the old rules tend to be those that received some earlier attention from the Court, including many in which the Court ordered full merits briefing.

Keeping tabs on which petitions might be up at the next internal conference

The new rules came with the possibility of faster up-or-down decisions on petitions.

To this point, the Court has been denying a steady flow of petitions under the new rules. But it has not yet granted any for review. The Court is requesting responses to petitions; those are being filed. Excluding parental-termination cases, the Court has requested a response to more than 50 regular petitions. Before today, none of those had been granted or denied.4

This week the Court made its first grants, and first denials, of petitions under its new rules

The orders list showed three petition grants (with the two San Patricio County Appraisal District cases consolidated for oral argument):

DALLAS COUNTY v. KEITH LEONARD, No. 26-0128

Chosen for future argument by order issued May 1, 2026

SAN PATRICIO COUNTY APPRAISAL DISTRICT v. DEVON GAS SERVICES, L.P., AS AGENT FOR GLENCORE LTD., No. 26-0153

Chosen for future argument by order issued May 1, 2026

SAN PATRICIO COUNTY APPRAISAL DISTRICT v. GUNVOR USA LLC, No. 26-0157

Chosen for future argument by order issued May 1, 2026

The Dallas County case is about the Texas Tort Claims Act. The two petitions brought by San Patricio County Appraisal District are pitched as being about “whether the State, via its interior local governments, will benefit from very significant revenues that result from the massive exportation of oil, NGL and LNG…”5

At this week’s conference, the Court also chose (for the first time under the new rules) to deny some of the petitions for which it had requested a response.6

Questions for the future (for me, at least)

The timing of grants relative to oral argument

The petitions granted today were set for oral argument October 6.

That kind of gap has always been typical for “grants” made during this spring period, when the Court has already finished hearing arguments for this term and is filling next term’s calendar.

What is worth keeping an eye on is how this gap fits — and may become the norm — for all “grants” under the new petition rules. According to the “Supreme Court Procedures Summary,” the Court’s hope is to leave enough time for each side to get an extension, in the regular course, and for all briefing to be complete at least 2 weeks before argument:

It looks like the Court exactly hit that target today.

By my math, the regular briefing schedule (with each side taking an extension on their opening brief) would see the reply brief filed on September 21, 2026 — two weeks before argument.

Do we know anything (yet) about when petitions will be listed for conference?

Another timing issue I’m wondering about is when petitions filed under these new rules will be put on the Court’s internal conference agenda for this grant-or-deny decision.

The old IOPs (at least at one time) suggested that petitions were set for the first conference thirty days after the response was filed, leaving time for a reply to be filed in the normal course.

The newly issued “Supreme Court Procedures Summary” is more circumspect. It says that a petition goes onto the conference agenda “after” the deadline for a reply. But it does not say how many days after, or measured from when.

Before today, I had guessed that the usual timing might be 30 days after a response was filed. With that in mind, I recently added an experimental column to the page on my site that tracks petitions that have a response on file for the “Initial Conference.” That column, today at least, shows which of the Court’s publicly listed conference dates is the first that falls at least 30 days after the response.

Most of today’s “denials” were, in fact, petitions that fit that schedule. But today’s “grants” actually came in some cases where the response was filed less than 30 days before the conference. It’s possible that is because the Court chose some petitions for accelerated treatment (perhaps in an effort to leave enough time before an October 6 argument date). It’s very possible that the Court just hasn’t settled into a reliable pattern yet. Or that there’s no reliable pattern to be found.

I’ll be adjusting the knobs and dials of this “conference date” column, as we learn more. In the meantime, you can use that page on my website to see which petitions may be up for conference.

  1. That differs from the familiar old system in Texas, under which the Court would defer its grant-or-deny decision until after ordering full merits briefing. You can read more about these differences in this prior post. ↩

  2. I’ve given some thought to how to visualize these two tracks. That chart should change pretty dramatically after the Court has finished issuing opinions for its argued cases in June. ↩

  3. When I took a snapshot in March, it caught a moment when the two tracks happened to be exactly equal in total size. You can see the current sizes on this page. ↩

  4. Including parental-termination cases, the Court has (as of today) only denied one petition with a response request. ↩

  5. This is quoting the Introduction of the petition in San Patricio County Appraisal District v. Devon Gas Services, L.P., as Agent for Glencore Ltd., No. 26-0153. ↩

  6. It’s too early to do the math about grant rates. I’m hoping for a few more data points by early June. ↩