Texas Tech University System and Texas Tech University System Board of Regents v. Pureza "Didit" Martinez ( 2024 )

Supreme Court of Texas
══════════
No. 22-0843
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Texas Tech University System and
Texas Tech University System Board of Regents,
Petitioners,
v.
Pureza “Didit” Martinez,
Respondent
═══════════════════════════════════════
On Petition for Review from the
Court of Appeals for the Seventh District of Texas
═══════════════════════════════════════
Argued November 30, 2023
JUSTICE HUDDLE delivered the opinion of the Court, in which
Chief Justice Hecht, Justice Lehrmann, Justice Devine, Justice
Blacklock, and Justice Bland joined.
JUSTICE YOUNG filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justice Boyd
and Justice Busby joined.
After over eleven years of service, Pureza “Didit” Martinez was
fired by the president of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences
Center. Martinez, who was seventy-two years old at the time, sued the
Health Sciences Center, alleging age discrimination. The question in
this case is whether Martinez’s pleadings allege facts that could support
an age-discrimination claim against two other defendants: the Texas
Tech University System and the TTU System’s Board of Regents. They
jointly filed a plea to the jurisdiction, arguing that they retained
sovereign immunity because Martinez failed to plead allegations that
could make them liable to her for age discrimination under the Labor
Code. In essence, they denied being Martinez’s employer. The trial
court denied the plea, and the court of appeals affirmed.
We conclude that Martinez’s petition does not allege facts
demonstrating that the TTU System or the Board employed Martinez
directly or that either one controlled access to and interfered with her
employment. Martinez’s petition thus fails to allege facts that
affirmatively demonstrate that she has a valid age-discrimination claim
against the TTU System or the Board, as opposed to the Health Sciences
Center. For this reason, Martinez failed to allege a waiver of sovereign
immunity, and the plea to the jurisdiction of the TTU System and the
Board should have been granted. Nevertheless, because the petition
does not foreclose a valid claim against those defendants, we remand to
the trial court to give Martinez an opportunity to replead.
I. Background
Martinez started working as senior assistant to the president at
the Health Sciences Center in January 2008. She was promoted the
next year to be the president’s chief of staff. She retained that position
when the Health Sciences Center hired a new president, Dr. Tedd
Mitchell, in 2010.
2
Martinez was let go nine years later, at age seventy-two. About
one month earlier, Dr. Mitchell emailed Martinez and fifteen other
senior employees at the Health Sciences Center regarding the need to
address succession planning as part of the university’s overall strategic
planning process. The email opens by mentioning Dr. Mitchell’s recent
discussion regarding succession planning with the Board. It goes on to
describe the results of an internal analysis of employees in leadership
positions, and it concludes with a request that each recipient of the email
develop for Dr. Mitchell’s review a succession plan for his or her
individual role. We reproduce the email in its entirety because it is the
centerpiece of Martinez’s claims:
Good morning everyone – Given the current whirlwind
surrounding the timeline of the Legislative Session, I’ve
not spent a lot of time on strategic planning for either [the
Health Sciences Center] or the [TTU] System. However,
with the session coming to a close by the end of this month,
it will be time to shift gears and plan for the future.
One of the areas that I have discussed with members of the
[Board] is related to succession planning at both the
[TTU System] as well as [the Health Sciences Center]. It
is something they are quite interested in and is timely
because of the current economy. Low unemployment
means that recruiting becomes harder, which means we
must all be quite intentional in our planning.
I asked Steve Sosland to do an analysis of our current
leadership, and the results illustrate why this is necessary.
For members of our [President’s Executive Council], the
average age is 60, 62% are eligible for retirement, and of
those not yet eligible for retirement, 50% will be in the next
2-5 years. This is not meant to insult anyone’s age or
length of employment, but rather to point out that our most
important governing group is vulnerable to a precipitous
change at any given time.
3
Accordingly, I am going to ask everyone to develop a
written document for their own succession planning, which
I would like to review as part of [the Health Sciences
Center]’s strategic planning process.
Thanks to everyone for helping to square this away.
Tedd
About one month after Martinez received this email, the Health
Sciences Center’s budget office informed her that Dr. Mitchell had
approved salary increases for her and several other members of the
President’s Executive Council (the same group that received the email).
The next morning, however, Martinez alleges she was approached by
Dr. Mitchell and told without explanation that she could no longer serve
as his chief of staff. Several hours later, Dr. Mitchell emailed Martinez
and stated that he had lost confidence in her ability to maintain
confidentiality, making their “ongoing work together impossible.” He
cited an incident the night before in which a senior vice president told
Dr. Mitchell that his faculty and staff had learned “from the president’s
office” that he was going to be fired. Martinez “vehemently den[ied]” the
accusation that she had leaked this information.
Following her termination, Martinez filed a complaint with the
Texas Workforce Commission, and she later sued the Health Sciences
Center, Texas Tech University, the TTU System, and the TTU System’s
Board of Regents under Section 21.051 of the Labor Code. Her petition
alleges that she was unlawfully terminated due to her age1 and seeks
damages, including front and back pay, lost wages and employee
1 We express no opinion on the ultimate merits of Martinez’s
age-discrimination claim.
4
benefits, loss of earning capacity, damage to her reputation, punitive
damages, and attorney’s fees.
The University, the TTU System, and the Board (but not the
Health Sciences Center) filed a plea to the jurisdiction.2 They argued
that immunity had not been waived as to them because Martinez did
not exhaust her administrative remedies as to any defendant other than
the Health Sciences Center. Martinez responded and argued that she
properly exhausted her administrative remedies because her
administrative charge was sufficiently broad to encompass all four
defendants.
The day before the hearing on the plea to the jurisdiction, the
defendants alleged, as an affirmative defense, that the University, the
TTU System, and the Board (but not the Health Sciences Center)
retained immunity because “they were not [Martinez]’s employer.”
Then, on the morning of the hearing, the defendants filed a reply brief
arguing that, in addition to Martinez’s failure to exhaust her
administrative remedies, her claims against the University, the
TTU System, and the Board should be dismissed because “they are not
properly brought against [Martinez]’s employer under Texas Labor Code
§ 21.051.”
At the hearing, the defendants conceded that jurisdiction was
proper for Martinez’s “actual employer,” the Health Sciences Center.
But they asserted that Martinez failed to allege that any of the other
2 The defendants originally did not answer, and Martinez obtained a
partial default judgment against all defendants on liability. The trial court
later set aside the default judgment, and that order has not been challenged in
this appeal.
5
defendants was her employer, so immunity was not waived as to those
defendants. In response, Martinez’s counsel agreed that “[h]er employer
was the Texas Tech University Health Science[s] Center.” But citing
this Court’s opinion in NME Hospitals, Inc. v. Rennels, 994 S.W.2d 142(Tex. 1999), Martinez argued that she could sue entities other than her
employer for unlawful employment practices if those entities “controlled
access” to her employment opportunities and “denied or interfered with
that access based on unlawful criteria,” such as age discrimination. Id.
at 147. Relying primarily on Dr. Mitchell’s succession-planning email,
Martinez argued that she was terminated because the Board, as the
governing body of the TTU System, decided to decrease the age of the
President’s Executive Council and asked Dr. Mitchell “to rectify the
situation.”
The trial court denied the plea to the jurisdiction, and the
University, the TTU System, and the Board appealed. They argued that
Martinez failed to plead sufficient allegations to demonstrate that these
defendants either were her employer or satisfied the Rennels test.3 The
court concluded that Martinez’s petition alleged sufficient facts to
establish jurisdiction over the TTU System and the Board, but not the
University. 683 S.W.3d 111, 116 (Tex. App.—Amarillo 2022). It
therefore reversed the order as to the University, albeit with an
3 The defendants also argued that Martinez failed to exhaust her
administrative remedies. 683 S.W.3d 111, 116–17 (Tex. App.—Amarillo 2022).
The court of appeals rejected this argument, id. at 117–18, and the defendants
have not raised it in this Court.
6
opportunity for Martinez to replead.4 Id. at 118. The court affirmed the
remainder of the trial court’s order. Id. The TTU System and the Board
petitioned this Court for review, which we granted.
II. Applicable Law
Although Chapter 21 of the Labor Code clearly and
unambiguously waives immunity for certain unlawful employment
practices, “it is a limited waiver of immunity.” Prairie View A&M Univ.
v. Chatha, 381 S.W.3d 500, 513 (Tex. 2012). Chapter 21 “waives
immunity from suit only for statutory violations, which means the trial
court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction over the dispute absent some
evidence the [defendant] violated” Chapter 21. Alamo Heights Indep.
Sch. Dist. v. Clark, 544 S.W.3d 755, 763 (Tex. 2018).
When, as in this case, a jurisdictional plea challenges the
plaintiff’s pleadings, the Court determines whether the plaintiff has
alleged facts that affirmatively demonstrate a court’s jurisdiction to
hear the cause. Tex. Dep’t of Parks & Wildlife v. Miranda, 133 S.W.3d
217, 226 (Tex. 2004). “[O]ur notice-pleading rules . . . require pleadings
to not only give notice of the claim and the relief sought but also of the
essential factual allegations.” In re First Rsrv. Mgmt., L.P., 671 S.W.3d
653, 661–62 (Tex. 2023) (citations and internal quotation marks
omitted). We construe the pleadings liberally in favor of the plaintiff
and look to the pleader’s intent. Miranda, 133 S.W.3d at 226. But courts
“cannot use a liberal construction of the petition as a license to read into
the petition a claim that it does not contain.” Flowers v. Flowers, 407
4 Neither party has challenged the court of appeals’ ruling as to the
University in this Court.
7
S.W.3d 452, 458 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2013, no pet.). If the
pleadings lack sufficient facts to affirmatively demonstrate the trial
court’s jurisdiction but do not affirmatively demonstrate incurable
defects in jurisdiction, the plaintiff should be afforded the opportunity
to amend. Miranda, 133 S.W.3d at 226–27.5
Labor Code Section 21.051 provides that “[a]n employer commits
an unlawful employment practice if because of . . . age the employer . . .
discharges an individual, or discriminates in any other manner against
an individual in connection with . . . the terms, conditions, or privileges
of employment.” TEX. LAB. CODE § 21.051(1). The statutory prohibition
against age discrimination applies to an individual who is “40 years of
age or older.” Id. § 21.101.
The key question in this case is whether Martinez alleges
sufficient facts to demonstrate that the TTU System and the Board can
be liable to Martinez as an “employer” under Chapter 21. The statute
defines “employer” to include a “state agency, or state instrumentality,
regardless of the number of individuals employed.” Id. § 21.002(8)(D).
This Court held in Rennels that a plaintiff “need not show that she
worked directly for the [defendant] to maintain standing under
5 We have previously analogized pleadings-based jurisdictional pleas to
special exceptions. See State v. Lueck, 290 S.W.3d 876, 884 (Tex. 2009) (“While
[filing special exceptions is] available, and certainly not objectionable, we have
never held that the State is precluded from challenging pleadings in a plea to
the jurisdiction when it could have done so via special exceptions . . . .”); Tex.
A&M Univ. Sys. v. Koseoglu, 233 S.W.3d 835, 840 (Tex. 2007) (noting that the
outcome of granting a pleadings-based plea to the jurisdiction is similar to the
outcome of granting special exceptions).
8
section 21.055.”6 994 S.W.2d at 144. Borrowing the Title VII standard
articulated in Sibley Memorial Hospital v. Wilson, 488 F.2d 1338 (D.C.
Cir. 1973), the Rennels Court concluded that a plaintiff may maintain a
Chapter 21 claim against a defendant in the absence of a direct
employment relationship if:
(1) “the defendant is an employer within the statutory definition
of the Act”;
(2) “some sort of employment relationship exists between the
plaintiff and a third party”; and
(3) “the defendant controlled access to the plaintiff’s employment
opportunities and denied or interfered with that access based
on unlawful criteria.”
994 S.W.2d at 147 (citations omitted).
In applying Rennels, our courts of appeals have consistently
required evidence that the defendant exercised control over some
specific aspect of the employment process and took some unlawful action
consistent with that control. For example, in University of Texas at El
Paso v. Ochoa, the court held that a custodian employed by a staffing
agency and assigned to work at UTEP raised a fact issue whether she
could sue UTEP because there was evidence that UTEP had offered her
a permanent position but UTEP’s head of custodial services directed the
agency to end her assignment there. 410 S.W.3d 327, 334–35 (Tex.
App.—El Paso 2013, pet. denied); see also Univ. of Tex.–Pan Am. v.
Miller, No. 03-10-00710-CV, 2013 WL 4818355, at *5 (Tex. App.—Austin
6 Although Rennels involved a claim under Section 21.055 (which
governs retaliation), both statutes refer to unlawful conduct by “[a]n
employer,” and the parties agree that Rennels applies to Martinez’s claims
under Section 21.051.
9
Aug. 28, 2013, no pet.) (holding that a UTPA police officer could sue the
UT System because his employment required a commission through the
UT System’s police department and that department’s director
terminated his commission and recommended that UTPA fire him). In
Rennels itself, we held that a pathologist could sue a hospital that was
not her direct employer because the hospital had contractual authority
to influence her employer’s promotion decisions and she presented
evidence that the hospital’s CEO directly encouraged her employer not
to promote her. 994 S.W.2d at 147–48. Conversely, in Johnson v. Scott
Fetzer Co., the court of appeals held that a fired vacuum-cleaner
salesman could not sue the vacuum manufacturer because it only
controlled how its vacuums were sold and had no right to hire or fire
salespersons or set work hours, salary, commissions, or bonuses. 124
S.W.3d 257, 264 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2003, pet. denied); see also
Holloway v. Dall. Cnty. Hosp. Dist., No. 05-20-01114-CV, 2022 WL
17883799, at *17 (Tex. App.—Dallas Dec. 23, 2022, no pet.) (holding a
hospital contractor’s employee could not sue the hospital because the
hospital’s complaints about performance deficiencies did not equate to
interference with his employment and the hospital’s right to control who
worked on its account did not indicate operational control over the
contractor).
Here, of course, we are not asked to decide whether there is
evidence to support Martinez’s claims. The plea to the jurisdiction
challenges only Martinez’s pleadings. We therefore must determine
whether the petition alleges sufficient facts to affirmatively
10
demonstrate that Martinez has a Section 21.051 claim against the
TTU System and the Board. See Miranda, 133 S.W.3d at 226.
III. Analysis
The TTU System and the Board both argue that Martinez’s
petition is insufficient to support a Section 21.051 claim against them.
They assert the petition alleges no facts to support the third element of
the Rennels test—that either the TTU System or the Board “controlled
access to [Martinez]’s employment opportunities and denied or
interfered with that access.” 994 S.W.2d at 147. We agree.
In concluding that both the TTU System and the Board
“controlled access” to Martinez’s employment opportunities, the court of
appeals relied on unpleaded provisions in the Education Code that
generally describe the TTU System and the Health Sciences Center’s
system of governance. See TEX. EDUC. CODE §§ 109.001–.255,
110.01–.16. Section 109.001 states that the TTU System is “composed
of all those institutions and entities presently under the governance,
control, jurisdiction, and management of the [Board]” and that “[t]he
governance, control, jurisdiction, organization, and management of the
[TTU System] is hereby vested in the present [Board].” Id. § 109.001(a),
(c). And Section 110.01 states that the Health Sciences Center is “a
separate institution . . . under the direction, management, and control
of the [Board].” Id. § 110.01; see also id. § 110.02 (“The [Board] has the
same powers of governance, control, jurisdiction, and management over
the Health Sciences Center as it exercises over the [TTU System] and
its components.”). Based on these provisions, the court of appeals
concluded that the TTU System, through the Board, “is in a legal
11
position to regulate employment decisions of the [Health Sciences]
Center.” 683 S.W.3d at 116.
Even assuming that the Board (or the TTU System, acting
through the Board) is “in a legal position” to control employment
decisions at the Health Sciences Center,7 Rennels requires more. To
affirmatively demonstrate a Chapter 21 claim under Rennels, a plaintiff
must allege sufficient facts that the defendant actually controlled access
to the plaintiff’s employment opportunities and that it denied or
interfered with that access. As both Rennels itself and the cases that
apply it have demonstrated, a defendant that is not the plaintiff’s direct
employer can be liable only if it had operational control over employment
decisions and took direct action against the plaintiff consistent with that
control. See Rennels, 994 S.W.2d at 147 (imposing Chapter 21 liability
based on evidence that the defendant was permitted by contract to
influence the plaintiff’s employment status and did in fact do so);
Holloway, 2022 WL 17883799, at *17 (rejecting a Chapter 21 claim
because the defendant’s contractual right of control over the plaintiff’s
employer did not include operational control over employees); Johnson,
124 S.W.3d at 264 (rejecting a Chapter 21 claim when the defendant’s
control did not include employment decisions).
7 The TTU System and the Board argue that they cannot as a matter of
law exercise control over Martinez’s employment opportunities because the
Board has enacted “Regents’ Rules” that give each institution’s president sole
responsibility for making high-level appointments at that institution. Even if
we were to read these “Regents’ Rules” as a limit on the Board’s statutory
authority, the mere existence of these rules does not conclusively preclude a
plaintiff from alleging that the Board, as a matter of fact, exercised actual
control over and interfered with his or her access to an employment
opportunity.
12
The Board’s general right to “direct[], manage[], and control” the
Health Sciences Center does not equate to actual control over Martinez’s
employment opportunities. This principle is similar to our longstanding
rule, derived from the Restatement, that forbids imposing liability based
solely on a general right of control over the work of an independent
contractor. See Koch Refin. Co. v. Chapa, 11 S.W.3d 153, 155 (Tex. 1999)
(citing RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 414 cmt. c (AM. L. INST.
1965)); Redinger v. Living, Inc., 689 S.W.2d 415, 418 (Tex. 1985) (holding
that a general right to order work started and stopped or to inspect
progress and receive reports is insufficient to establish a general
contractor’s liability for an independent contractor’s work). We have
held in such cases that a defendant is not liable unless it “controls the
details or methods of the independent contractor’s work to such an
extent that the contractor cannot perform the work as it chooses.” Fifth
Club, Inc. v. Ramirez, 196 S.W.3d 788, 792 (Tex. 2006) (citing Koch
Refin., 11 S.W.3d at 155–56). In the same way, the Board’s general right
to oversee the Health Sciences Center is insufficient to demonstrate
control over the details or methods of the Health Sciences Center’s
employment decisions. Accordingly, the provisions of the Education
Code on which the court of appeals relied do not satisfy the Rennels
standard, i.e., that the TTU System or the Board “controlled access to
[Martinez]’s employment opportunities.” 994 S.W.2d at 147.
The court of appeals’ expansive reading of Rennels is problematic
for two other reasons. First, it would essentially make every parent
corporation liable under Chapter 21 for the employment actions of a
subsidiary or affiliated entity governed by the parent. This would be
13
contrary to well-settled Texas law. See SSP Partners v. Gladstrong Invs.
(USA) Corp., 275 S.W.3d 444, 455 (Tex. 2008) (“We have never held
corporations liable for each other’s obligations merely because of
centralized control, mutual purposes, and shared finances.”); Lucas v.
Tex. Indus., Inc., 696 S.W.2d 372, 374 (Tex. 1984) (“There must be
something more than mere unity of financial interest, ownership and
control for a court to treat the subsidiary as the alter ego of the parent
and make the parent liable for the subsidiary’s tort.”).
Likewise, the court of appeals erred to the extent it relied on
Dr. Mitchell’s dual roles, without more, to conclude that Martinez
pleaded a basis for the TTU System’s liability. See 683 S.W.3d at 117.
An allegation that Dr. Mitchell simultaneously served as chancellor of
the TTU System and president of the Health Sciences Center, without
more, does not demonstrate that the TTU System controlled access to
Martinez’s employment opportunities with the Health Sciences Center.
See First Rsrv., 671 S.W.3d at 660–61 (“[I]t is entirely appropriate for
directors of a parent corporation to serve as directors of its subsidiary,
and that fact alone may not serve to expose the parent corporation to
liability for its subsidiary’s acts.” (alteration in original) (quoting United
States v. Bestfoods, 524 U.S. 51, 69 (1998))); see also Turner v. Baylor
Richardson Med. Ctr., 476 F.3d 337, 344 (5th Cir. 2007) (concluding that
evidence of two entities’ common ownership or management, standing
alone, was insufficient to establish both entities’ employer status under
Title VII).
The court of appeals nevertheless concluded that Martinez’s
allegations were sufficient to survive the plea to the jurisdiction.
14
Reading Martinez’s allegations in a favorable light and “in conjunction
with” the Education Code provisions vesting the Board with a general
right to manage the Health Sciences Center, the court of appeals
concluded that Martinez’s petition “reasonably leads one to see the
following picture painted”: the TTU System, through its Board, “decided
to rid” the Health Sciences Center of older employees and “directed”
Dr. Mitchell to implement this policy, which he did. 683 S.W.3d at 116.
We conclude the facts as alleged in Martinez’s petition, even when
liberally construed in her favor, see Miranda, 133 S.W.3d at 226, cannot
be read to paint that picture. No one disputes that Martinez alleged
sufficient facts to support a Section 21.051 claim against her direct
employer, the Health Sciences Center, through the alleged acts of its
president, Dr. Mitchell. But Martinez presents no factual allegations
that the TTU System or the Board, as opposed to Dr. Mitchell, controlled
access to Martinez’s employment and denied or interfered with that
access. Contrary to the court of appeals’ gloss, Martinez’s petition
nowhere alleges facts demonstrating that the TTU System or the Board
“decided to rid” the Health Sciences Center of older employees or
“directed” Dr. Mitchell to implement such a policy.
Martinez’s petition includes allegations that the Board “wanted
to reduce the average age of [the Health Sciences Center’s] senior
leadership” and that the Board “asked Dr. Mitchell to reduce the age of
senior leadership at [the Health Sciences Center].” These allegations
are insufficient to affirmatively demonstrate that the Board controlled
access to Martinez’s employment and denied or interfered with her
employment. Martinez expressly rests these allegations on
15
Dr. Mitchell’s email, which she attaches and references in the petition.
See City of Abilene v. Carter, 530 S.W.3d 268, 276 (Tex. App.—Eastland
2017, no pet.) (“[A] document attached and referred to in a pleading shall
be deemed a part of the pleading for all purposes.” (citing TEX. R. CIV.
P. 59)). Yet that email states only that the Board was interested in
“succession planning”—a best practice for any institution hoping to
endure beyond the short-term—because of low employment and
difficulty in recruiting at that time due to a tight labor market. No
reasonable reading of the email supports an allegation that the Board
controlled access to and interfered with Martinez’s employment.8 See
State v. Lueck, 290 S.W.3d 876, 885–86 (Tex. 2009) (analyzing the
plaintiff’s pleadings together with an attached email and concluding
they affirmatively negated the existence of an alleged violation of the
Whistleblower Act against TxDOT).9
8 Indeed, succession planning frequently is accomplished by
cross-training existing employees to create redundant knowledge within an
organization. It does not require terminating anyone but only distributing
knowledge within an institution to guard against the disruption that results
from the departure of an employee who was the single repository of key
information. See generally CHRISTEE GABOUR ATWOOD, SUCCESSION
PLANNING BASICS 13 (2d ed. 2020) (ebook) (“The purpose of succession
planning is to prepare your organization for the challenges and opportunities
associated with changes in critical key positions. You’ll accomplish this by
developing employees to ensure that you have qualified candidates ready to fill
those key positions when a vacancy occurs.”); WILLIAM J. ROTHWELL,
EFFECTIVE SUCCESSION PLANNING 6 (4th ed. 2010) (“[Succession planning] is
thus a deliberate and systematic effort by an organization to ensure leadership
continuity in key positions, retain and develop intellectual and knowledge
capital for the future, and encourage individual advancement.”).
9The dissent points to a letter from the U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission, also attached to Martinez’s petition, that
16
Martinez also alleges that Dr. Mitchell terminated her “to
appease the Board of Regents” by lowering the average age of his senior
advisors. At most, this allegation may demonstrate Dr. Mitchell’s
motivation. But it is insufficient to support a claim that the TTU System
or the Board—neither of which is alleged to be Martinez’s direct
employer—exercised control over Dr. Mitchell’s decision to terminate
Martinez herself, much less that it directed him to do so.
In sum, Martinez’s petition fails to allege that the TTU System or
the Board “controlled access” to Martinez’s employment opportunities
and “interfered with that access.” The petition therefore does not allege
facts that affirmatively demonstrate a Section 21.051 claim against the
TTU System or the Board under Rennels.10 Given this, and the absence
purportedly “corroborates” Martinez’s allegations. Post at 10 (Young, J.,
dissenting). In that letter, the EEOC finds “there is reasonable cause to believe
that Respondent”—expressly defined in the letter to be the Health Sciences
Center—“discharged [Martinez] because of her age.” (Emphasis added.) But
whether the letter corroborates Martinez’s claim against the Health Sciences
Center is irrelevant because, as we noted, the Health Sciences Center does not
contest jurisdiction. The more important point to be gleaned from the EEOC
letter is that it makes no findings about the TTU System or the Board, the only
two entities over which the trial court’s jurisdiction remains in question.
10 Our dissenting colleagues assert that our decision is inconsistent with
the standard that we construe the pleadings liberally. Miranda, 133 S.W.3d
at 226; see post at 7 (Young, J., dissenting). But like the court of appeals, their
approach departs from our precedents by prioritizing the pleader’s intent over
the pleadings themselves. Rather than look to Martinez’s allegations and
construe them in light of her intent, the dissent appears to suggest we should
focus on her intent and then determine whether her petition “permit[s] the
inference” that she has alleged a claim under Rennels against the TTU System
and the Board. Post at 11 (Young, J., dissenting). We rejected a similar
argument in County of Cameron v. Brown, 80 S.W.3d 549 (Tex. 2002). There,
we held that the plaintiffs’ allegation that failed lighting on a causeway
17
of any other alleged basis for imposing liability against the TTU System
or the Board—as opposed to the Health Sciences Center, which concedes
it employed Martinez and does not contest jurisdiction—the trial court
should have granted the plea to the jurisdiction with respect to the
TTU System and the Board.
The TTU System and the Board seek rendition of judgment and
dismissal of Martinez’s claim against them. But as the defendants
conceded in their briefing in the court of appeals, their jurisdictional
plea challenged only Martinez’s pleadings.
Ordinarily, when a jurisdictional plea challenges only the
pleadings, the remedy is to remand for an opportunity to replead.
Miranda, 133 S.W.3d at 226–27. That remedy is particularly
appropriate here. The TTU System and the Board did not expressly
assert that they might not qualify as an “employer” under Chapter 21
until they filed their answer the day before their jurisdictional plea was
heard. Until then, Martinez might have been unaware of the need to
plead factual allegations to establish the elements for imposing liability
under Rennels.
Martinez may well be able to cure this pleading deficiency on
remand. As our dissenting colleagues correctly suggest, repleading to
satisfy Rennels may not be a heavy lift given the facts Martinez has
constituted a premises defect was insufficient, and a plea to the jurisdiction
should have been granted, because the plaintiffs failed to allege that they did
not actually know of the condition, a “necessary premises-defect element.” Id.
at 558. “Moreover, we disagree with the court of appeals’ conclusion that we
can infer this element from the pleadings.” Id. Like here, the Court remanded
to allow the plaintiffs an opportunity to replead. Id. at 558–59.
18
already alleged. But Rennels requires that Martinez allege facts
regarding both the exercise of control and interference with Martinez’s
employment by each of the TTU System and the Board. We decline our
dissenting colleagues’ invitation to dilute those requirements, even if
Martinez’s live pleading falls just short of the mark.11
IV. Conclusion
Martinez failed to allege facts that affirmatively demonstrate the
court’s jurisdiction over her claims against the TTU System or the Board
because, as currently pleaded, her petition does not contain sufficient
facts to demonstrate that either the TTU System or the Board could be
liable to her under Section 21.051. The trial court therefore should have
granted the TTU System and the Board’s plea to the jurisdiction. But
because Martinez’s petition does not affirmatively demonstrate that she
cannot cure the jurisdictional defect, she should be afforded an
opportunity to replead. We therefore reverse the court of appeals’
judgment in part and remand to the trial court for further proceedings.
Rebeca A. Huddle
Justice
OPINION DELIVERED: June 14, 2024
11 Martinez also asserts that discovery may reveal documents
demonstrating that the TTU System in fact was her direct employer at one
time. That theory, if pleaded, may well be sufficient to defeat a jurisdictional
plea by the TTU System. But it is nowhere pleaded in Martinez’s live petition
and therefore cannot serve as a basis for denying the plea at this stage.
19