Judge Mark Hanna made two rulings Wednesday in County Attorney Bridgette Smith-Lawson’s lawsuit against Fort Bend County Commissioners Court. One went against her. One went in her favor.
Hanna threw out Smith-Lawson’s claim that commissioners broke the law simply by voting to create a new Civil Division. That part of the case is over. Commissioners had the budget power to create the new department, Hanna ruled.
But Hanna let a second claim stand. Smith-Lawson also argued that moving specific attorneys, staff, and funding out of her office crosses a legal line, not just a budget one. That claim survives.
The bigger question
This isn’t the first time Fort Bend has had to sort out where Commissioners Court’s budget power ends. The county went through something similar this month over its associate judges. Commissioners can decide whether to pay for associate judge positions, nobody disputes that. But district court judges argued the power to appoint or remove associate judges belongs to them, not commissioners, under the Texas Government Code. “Budgetary power cannot become judicial power,” Judge Maggie Jaramillo said at the time.
Smith-Lawson’s surviving claim rests on the same kind of split, and it lines up closely with a standard the Texas Attorney General has already laid out. In Opinion KP-0492, the Attorney General said Commissioners Court can create legal capacity for work that isn’t a core statutory duty of the county attorney, and can even pull funding from an existing civil-attorney position, but only so long as doing so doesn’t “usurp or interfere” with the county attorney’s core duties.
Those core duties are spelled out in Texas Government Code §45.179, which covers Fort Bend specifically. It makes the County Attorney responsible for representing the state, the county, and county officials in civil court matters, along with Drainage District representation, CPS matters, civil commitments, certain protective-order and juvenile matters, and quo warranto and removal actions. The same section lets the County Attorney appoint assistant attorneys with Commissioners Court’s approval, and gives commissioners the power to set those assistants’ salaries.
That’s the tension Hanna left unresolved. Before Wednesday, Smith-Lawson was arguing commissioners couldn’t create the new department or take her staff to fill it. After Wednesday, the case that survives is narrower: commissioners may be able to create the department, but they may not be able to staff it by pulling people and funding from her office if doing so interferes with the duties §45.179 assigns to her. Proving that interference is now Smith-Lawson’s burden.
Commissioners say other counties do this too
Commissioner Meyers’ office says Fort Bend isn’t inventing something new. In an email from Dennis Spellman, who handles media relations for Meyers’ office, the commissioner’s team named five Texas counties they say already run separate legal departments outside the county or district attorney’s office. In Galveston County, Commissioners Court created its own legal department, an arrangement that was challenged in court and upheld by the Texas Supreme Court in Guynes v. Galveston County. Bexar County just created a new Office of General Counsel, with a plan to place ten positions in the new office while sixteen stay with the Criminal District Attorney’s office. Williamson County has its own general counsel and staff working directly for Commissioners Court. Kendall County and Rockwall County both have a general counsel appointed by Commissioners Court and supervised by the county judge and commissioners.
Moving forward
Nine attorney positions and two support staff positions are set to move out of the County Attorney’s office and into the new Civil Division October 1, six days from today. The earliest notice affected staff had came the Friday before the August 27 vote, when the agenda item was first posted publicly. Staff learned the specifics of what would happen to their jobs, in Wednesday’s hearing.
Smith-Lawson currently has 22 attorneys on staff.
Whether that move amounts to a transfer or a firing is still contested. Smith-Lawson says the affected staff are being let go outright. “Have any of them reapplied? No. They just told us today that they’re going to be terminated and have to reapply,” she said. Randle told the judge, “We are setting up the division. If they want to apply, that’s fine. If they don’t, that’s fine,” he said during Wednesday’s hearing.
Smith-Lawson pointed to the tenure of specific staff as part of what’s at stake. “One of the ladies, Sandra, has been working for the county for over twenty years,” she said. “My general counsel chief has been here for well over ten years. What does that say to them? The institutional knowledge that walks out the door.”
First Assistant County Attorney Michelle Turner, who has worked in the office since 2007, nearly 20 years, is not among the cuts but described the toll on the people she supervises. “We have lawyers with young children. Lawyers who moved from other counties to come work here, and that’s gone in six business days,” she said. “These are lawyers that I supervise, and it is heartbreaking.”
Turner said the office runs on more than a paycheck. “I worked for these guys when my dad was dying. I was taking calls at the airport. That’s how much these people care. We forfeit vacation hours we’re not able to use. We work when we’re sick. It’s pride in our work,” she said.
Smith-Lawson said her office’s role goes well beyond Commissioners Court. “We all draft opinions every day, and we support the 800 million dollar budget for the county in agreements,” she said. “What they’re saying is, the three of us are going to make decisions regarding thirty-five other elected officers and forty-six other department heads.”
J. Grady Randle, the outside attorney representing Commissioners Andy Meyers and Vincent Morales, said he’ll appeal the part of the ruling that went against their wishes. Texas law allows either side to immediately appeal a ruling on a plea to the jurisdiction like this one, and that kind of appeal automatically pauses the underlying lawsuit while it’s pending. That pause affects the court case, not Commissioners Court’s ability to carry out the October 1 transfer itself.
Smith-Lawson’s lawyers sought a Rule 11 agreement, a written, court-filed agreement that would have kept the affected staff in place while the appeal plays out. Randle turned it down. A Rule 11 agreement becomes legally binding once it’s signed and filed with the court, or read aloud in the courtroom, and it’s covered under Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 11. Without one here, nothing pauses.
One more date to watch: Commissioners Court’s agenda for Thursday, September 24, includes a vote on a revised FY2027 positions report, set to take effect October 1 and replace the version approved earlier.