The State of Texas v. Nonparty Patient No. 1, et al. (No. 15-25-00023-CV; August 14, 2025) arose from the state’s 2024 lawsuit in Collin County against a physician whom the state alleged provided gender-transition treatment to minors in violation of SB 14 and the DTPA. The state served subpoenas on two hospitals requesting documents “relating to the care and treatment” of 21 patients, including their medical records, billing records, psychiatry notes, and correspondence.” Shortly thereafter, 11 of the patients filed a petition for motion of protection from discovery subpoenas in Dallas County, where their subpoenas were served. They asserted that their records are protected from disclosure under Rules 509 (physician-patient privilege) and 510 (mental health-information privilege). The state filed a plea to the jurisdiction, seeking to dismiss the Dallas County proceedings on the basis of sovereign immunity. It also filed a plea in abatement arguing that the Collin County court has dominant jurisdiction. The Dallas court denied the pleas. The state sought interlocutory relief and petitioned for mandamus.
In an opinion by Justice Field, the court affirmed the Dallas court’s denial of the state’s pleas and remanded to allow both parties to amend their pleadings to cure a jurisdictional defect. Taking up the jurisdictional issue first, the state argued that it had not waived sovereign immunity by filing suit against the physician. The patients responded that Texas Rules of Civil Procedure 176.6 and 192.6 entitle them to seek protection from the subpoenas and that sovereign immunity doesn’t apply. The state agreed that the patients sufficiently alleged that they were affected by the subpoenas and entitled to seek protection, as well as that the Dallas court contituted a district court in which the subpoenas were served. It also conceded that had the patients filed their subpoena challenge in Collin County, the challenge would not be barred by sovereign immunity. Observing that sovereign immunity ordinarily doesn’t apply to “procedural motions or ancillary proceedcings that occur within the context of a suit to which immunity does not apply or for which immunity has been waived,” but only to substantive claims against the state, the court found that “the petition for protection does not implicate those interests of the State that sovereign immunity is intended to protect.” Consequently, sovereign immunity didn’t apply to the patients’ subpoena challenge in Dallas.
The state next asserted that the patients didn’t have standing to challenge the subpoenas for the production of records for patients they don’t represent. The state pointed out that the 11 patients challenging the subpoenas asked for protection for all 21 affected patients, and they have not shown “they would be personally injured by the production of documents related to the unrepresented patients.” The court agreed with that point, but since the state didn’t raise the standing argument at the trial court, the real parties, the patients didn’t get the opportunity to amend their pleadings to affirmatively demonstrate their standing as to the unrepresented patients’ records. The court thus remanded to the Dallas court to afford this opportunity to cure a jurisdictional defect.
Finally, the court took up the state’s petition for writ of mandamus, in which they argue that the dominant-jurisdiction doctrine should be applied to abate the Dallas county proceedings pending the outcome of the Collin County case (which was filed first). The state argued that the two suits are “inherently interrelated,” that the Collin County suit came first, and that the Dallas court was required to abate. Casting some doubt on whether seeking protection from discovery is a “suit,” the court nevertheless rejected the state’s argument based on the language of the rules, which clearly allow the patients to seek relief in the county where the subpoenas were served (Dallas).
