Don Cruse

New petition rules at the Texas Supreme Court

The big news, really, is that the Texas Supreme Court dramatically changed its petition process in January.

Under the old system, the Court’s discretionary review proceeded in two steps. First, the parties would file a petition seeking to persaude the Court to show some interest. Then the Court would request full merits briefing from both sides. Only after those months of briefing would the Court decide whether to grant review or not.

The new process in Texas is loosely modeled on the petition for certiorari process at the U.S. Supreme Court. But it’s also uniquely different. Each time I read through the redline of the new petition rules, I see some new detail that I’d like to explore. I’ll write about some of those later.

My court-tracking website is being updated to fit this new petition process

The big news, for me, is that I’ve just updated my docket-tracking website to follow cases as they move through the new process.

The easiest place to see the change is the “Snapshot of the Docket” chart, which has been updated to reflect the different paths that petitions can take through the discretionary-review process — under the new rules and the old.

snapshot of the docket from my website

By looking across, you can see where the Court stands in this transition. The new petitions are still early in their journey, and the older petitions (those filed before January 1st) have either been denied or are moving forward. On this chart, each of these groups is clickable, so you can drill down to see the specific cases I’m tracking at each stage.

As of today, the Court has not just yet announced any grants of review for these new petitions.1 And it has also not yet taken advantage of its option to still request merits briefing, such as if it is considering a case for a possible per curiam. That’s just a snapshot in time. The up-to-date version of that chart lives here.

The Court did hold an internal conference this week, so it’s possible we will see the first set of those grant decisions as soon as this Friday.2

  1. The “1 Granted for Future Decision” is actually a certified question case, in which the notice was filed after January 1st. ↩

  2. I’m tracking a handful of petitions that had a response on file more than 30 days in advance of this week’s conference date. What I don’t know is whether the Court will be making any grant decisions at all this month or whether (as it has done in recent years) devoting some of its spring conferences solely to working through cases that have already been argued. ↩