Univ. of the Incarnate Word v. Redus
| Decision Date | 22 May 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 18-0351,18-0351 |
| Citation | 602 S.W.3d 398 |
| Parties | UNIVERSITY OF THE INCARNATE WORD, Petitioner, v. Valerie REDUS, et al., Respondents |
| Court | Texas Supreme Court |
Laurence S. Kurth, Matthew Fisher Wymer, San Antonio, Amy Warr, Houston, Wallace B. Jefferson, Austin, for Petitioner.
Frank Herrera Jr., Javier Thomas Duran, Robert A. Valadez, San Antonio, Mason W. Herring, Robert R. Burford, Brent C. Perry, Houston, for Respondents.
Warren Kenneth Paxton, Rance L. Craft, Jeffrey C. Mateer, Austin, Kyle D. Hawkins, for Amicus Curiae State of Texas.
The Education Code authorizes private universities to commission and employ peace officers.1 The code specifies that commissioned peace officers have official immunity.2 But the code does not purport to extend sovereign immunity to the officers' private university employers. More than twenty universities have established police departments under the code, including the petitioner in this case, the University of the Incarnate Word. In 2013, a University peace officer fatally shot Cameron Redus, a University student, following a traffic stop. His parents sued the officer and the University.
To date, this case has turned on whether the University has sovereign immunity when it is sued in connection with its law-enforcement activities. We previously held that the University may appeal from the adverse ruling on its jurisdictional plea of governmental immunity.3 We remanded this case to the court of appeals, however, to separately consider whether the State's sovereign immunity extends to the University. The court of appeals held that it does not.4
Though we have contemplated it, we have yet to extend sovereign immunity to a purely private entity—one neither created nor chartered by the government—even when that entity performs some governmental functions.5 In declining to do so, we examined whether the entity acted as an arm of the State government and whether affording it sovereign immunity fits within the doctrine's underlying nature and purposes.6
As a private entity, the University does not act as an arm of the State in its overall operations.7 And though the University's law enforcement activities benefit the public, its arguments for extending sovereign immunity do not comport with the doctrine's historic justifications: preserving the separation of government power and protecting the public treasury from lawsuits and judgments.
Nor does the legislation authorizing private university police departments reflect an intent that private universities possess sovereign immunity. The Education Code permits private universities to commission and employ peace officers. Each officer has official immunity under the code, from which the University may derivatively benefit.8 But the legislature omitted any expression that private universities have independent immunity separate from their officers. Because neither the doctrine's purposes nor the operative legislation supports extending sovereign immunity to the University, we affirm the court of appeals.
The Texas legislature authorized "[t]he governing boards of private institutions of higher education, including private junior colleges, to employ and commission peace officers."9 In 1994, the State's law-enforcement licensing agency approved the University's application to form a police department. Though privately employed, the University's officers enforce state and local law within the statute's parameters and have "all the powers, privileges, and immunities of peace officers."10
In 2013, a University peace officer stopped Cameron Redus on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. An altercation ensued, and the officer fatally shot Cameron. His parents sued the officer and the University for wrongful death and survival damages. The Reduses allege that the University "failed to exercise reasonable care in hiring, training, supervising and retaining" the officer.
The University filed a plea to the jurisdiction, contending that it is immune from suit. The trial court denied the plea, and the University appealed that ruling under a provision in the Tort Claims Act providing for an interlocutory appeal.11 The court of appeals held that the University could not bring an interlocutory appeal because it is not a governmental unit as the statute defines it.12 The statute permits an appeal by the government and "any other institution, agency, or organ of government the status and authority of which are derived from ... laws passed by the legislature under the constitution."13 We reversed, holding that, under the interlocutory appeal statute, the University met that definition "for purposes of law enforcement."14 We concluded that the University attained this status because the legislature has authorized the University to enforce state and local law through commissioned peace officers.15
Having concluded the University was entitled to an interlocutory appeal, we remanded the case to the court of appeals to consider in the first instance the University's sovereign immunity argument.16 "Whether an entity is entitled to an interlocutory appeal and whether an entity has sovereign immunity," we stressed, "are separate questions with separate analytical frameworks."17 The question whether the University enjoys immunity "implicate[s] principles of sovereign immunity," which have "no bearing" on the interlocutory-appeal analysis.18 We thus directed the court of appeals to examine "the ‘nature and purposes’ of sovereign immunity" to determine whether the State's sovereign immunity from suit extends to the University.19
On remand, the court of appeals considered whether "the purposes of sovereign immunity—protecting the public fisc and preserving separation of powers—are well-served by shielding a private university from suit arising from the performance of its law enforcement functions."20 The University argued that, absent its police force, "the cost of providing public safety would fall to local law enforcement" and, in turn, the taxpayers.21 The court of appeals rejected that argument.22 Even crediting the University's position, the court of appeals invoked our precedent that immunity is intended to "guard against the unforeseen expenditures associated with the government's defending lawsuits and paying judgments that could hamper government functions by diverting funds from their allocated purposes."23 The court of appeals accordingly declined to hold that the University possesses sovereign immunity.24 We granted review.
Sovereign immunity provides that "no state can be sued in her own courts without her consent, and then only in the manner indicated by that consent."25 Sovereign immunity is "inherent" in Texas statehood and "developed without any legislative or constitutional enactment."26
At its inception, courts premised sovereign immunity on the notion that "the King can do no wrong."27 The rationale for immunity evolved away from this legal fiction over time, but the doctrine remains unique to governmental authority.28 Modern justifications for it include preserving executive and legislative power from judicial encroachment and protecting the public treasury.29 Immunity "preserves separation-of-powers principles by preventing the judiciary from interfering with the Legislature's prerogative to allocate tax dollars."30 And immunity protects the public treasury by shielding the public "from the costs and consequences of improvident actions of their governments."31 Supported by these rationales, sovereign immunity "protects the public as a whole by preventing potential disruptions of key government services that could occur when government funds are unexpectedly and substantially diverted by litigation."32
It is "the judiciary's responsibility to define the boundaries of [this] common-law doctrine and to determine under what circumstances sovereign immunity exists in the first instance."33 The legislature informs that decision when it authorizes an entity to act as an arm of the State government, and the legislature further "determines when and to what extent to waive that immunity."34 This case presents a boundary question—we decide whether sovereign immunity extends to a private university because the legislature has authorized it to enforce state and local law through commissioned peace officers.
We have examined sovereign immunity in three contexts outside the State government: political subdivisions, legislatively authorized entities, and government contracts. We have long held that "[p]olitical subdivisions of the state—such as counties, municipalities, and school districts—share in the state's inherent immunity."35
These entities "represent no sovereignty distinct from the state and possess only such powers and privileges as have been expressly or impliedly conferred upon them."36 Thus, they enjoy "governmental" immunity for acts performed as a "branch of the state" but not for "acts performed in a proprietary, non-governmental capacity."37
In analyzing legislatively authorized entities that are not political subdivisions, we consider whether the authorizing statute "evinces clear legislative intent"38 to vest the entity with the "nature, purposes, and powers" of an "arm of the State government."39 If so vested, "that entity is a government unit unto itself" and is "entitled to assert immunity in its own right" when it performs a "governmental function."40 The entity is perforce a "discrete governmental unit" and enjoys "the same governmental immunity as other political subdivisions."41 If, however, an entity's underlying "nature, purposes and powers" are not congruent with an arm of State government, then the legislature cannot "de facto grant" it sovereign immunity.42
Outside the State, its political subdivisions, and...
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