Justice April Farris
In Jane Nelson In Her Official Capacity as Secretary of State for the State of Texas v. Jarret Woodward and Heather Couchman (No. 15-24-00038-CV; April 3, 2025), the Austin Court of Appeals reversed the district court’s denial of the Secretary’s plea, concluding, as it did in a similar contest Nelson v. Eubanks, that Appellees lacked both standing and a valid election contest. The suit arose from Appellees’ challenges to the results of a statewide election (November 7, 2023), which saw a whopping 2,536,708 voters approve the proposed constitutional amendment to create a Texas water fund for financing state water projects. Appellees claimed the results were indeterminable because the state’s electronic voting system failed to comply with the Texas Election Commission’s certification standards; this prompted the Travis County District Clerk to issue citation. Following an official canvass on December 4, 2023, the election was certified with the proposition being incorporated into Texas law (TEX. CONST. art. XVII § 1(c); Tex. Elec. Code § 67.013(d)). The next day, Secretary Nelson filed a plea to the jurisdiction arguing the (1) Appellees’ contest had been rendered moot because they failed to serve the citation before the official canvass’ completion, (2) Appellees lacked standing, (3) Appellees failed to plead a viable election contest. The trial court denied the plea, prompting this appeal.
In an opinion by Justice Farris, the Austin Court of Appeals denied the Secretary’s mootness claim, holding that citation errors do not constitute jurisdictional defects, especially when the error itself is harmless. The argument in question hinged on the citation’s improper listing of the general deadline to file answers to civil actions (Tex. R. Civ. P. 99(b)), instead of the statutory response deadline provided by the Election Code, requiring an answer by “10 a.m. of the 20th day after service of citation.” § 233.007(a)(2), Election Code. The Secretary contended that because Appellees failed to file and serve a proper citation before the final official canvass was complete, it is rendered moot. § 233.014(b). The Court opined that while stating the correct response deadline in a citation is a requirement under § 233.007, as the Court found in Tex. Windstorm Ins. Ass’n v. Pruski, 689 S.W.3d 887, 889 (Tex. 2024), it is not a jurisdictional one, as “treating [a] court employee’s error as a jurisdictional bar could thwart viable election contests” (Id.). The Court added that because the citation was filed, served, and responded to before the official canvass was conducted, it remained in accordance with the § 233.014(b).
The Court affirmed the Secretary’s second point, holding that Appellees failed to allege a particularized injury when claiming that the voting system’s connection to the internet and lack of testing “by an accredited voting system test laboratory” rendered “every vote counted” illegal, and thus gave them constitutional standing under § 233.002. Because the claim only asserted a hypothetical and generalized injury, rather than “actual or imminent” one, it could not confer standing to bring the election contest (Eubanks, 2024 WL 4886621, at *3-4). Thus, the court rejected the trial court’s denial of the Secretary’s plea to the jurisdiction. Similarly, because Appellees could not show that “the true [election] outcome would have been different if their claims were valid” (Id. at *5), the Court affirmed the Secretary’s third argument, holding that Appellees failed to plead a valid election contest. The court dismissed the claims for lack of jurisdiction, reversing the lower court’s decision.
TCJL Research Intern Shaan Rao Singh researched and wrote this article.
