Texas Fifteenth Court of Appeals

The Texas Fifteenth Court of Appeals is the newest intermediate appellate court in the state. The Legislature created it in 2023 through Senate Bill 1045, and the court opened for filings on September 1, 2024. It sits in Austin. The fourteen older courts of appeals draw their dockets by region, each tied to a fixed set of counties across the map. This bench works from a different premise. Its jurisdiction follows subject matter rather than geography, so a lawsuit filed far from the capital can travel here for review. That single design choice separates the court from every intermediate court that came before it.

Three justices sit on the Court of Appeals, a chief justice and two members. Governor Abbott appointed the first bench, and the seats fill by statewide election once the initial terms lapse. That statewide ballot breaks from the district elections used for every other intermediate court in Texas. A justice here answers to voters across the whole state rather than one region of it. Terms run six years and are staggered, so the entire bench does not turn over in a single cycle. The staggering keeps some institutional memory from one election to the next, which matters for a young court still building its body of published opinions.

Because the court is young, its own body of binding precedent is still thin. Practitioners fill the gap with decisions of the Supreme Court and with reasoning borrowed from the fourteen regional courts of appeals, while reading each new opinion from this bench with care. Early rulings on jurisdiction and procedure carry outsized influence, since they set the pattern later panels follow. A client picking counsel should ask whether the lawyer has tracked those opening decisions and understands how the court is defining the edges of its own authority.

What does the Court of Appeals actually review? Final judgments and a defined set of interlocutory orders from Texas trial courts, but only within the categories the Legislature assigned to it. Two streams feed most of the docket. The first is civil litigation by or against the state, a state agency, board, commission, department, or a state officer acting in an official capacity. The second is the appeal from the Texas Business Court, a specialized trial forum created in the same legislative session under Government Code Chapter 25A. When a business court judge signs a final judgment, the appeal generally comes to this court instead of the regional court that would otherwise have heard it.

One court sits above the Fifteenth Court of Appeals: the Supreme Court of Texas. A party who loses here may file a petition for review and ask the high court to take the case. That review is discretionary. The justices of the Supreme Court pick the petitions they want, and they grant only a fraction of what is filed. For most litigants, the judgment issued by the Court of Appeals is the last ruling on the merits they will ever receive. The record and the issues are effectively locked by the time the case leaves this level. Good appellate counsel treats the intermediate brief accordingly, because the argument filed here may be the final substantive one a court ever reads.

The civil focus matters for anyone choosing counsel. Criminal appeals in Texas run through a separate channel that ends at the Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin, a body distinct from the Supreme Court and from this intermediate court. Because the Fifteenth Court's assigned subjects are civil, criminal matters almost never appear on its docket. A defendant convicted in a district court does not appeal to the Fifteenth Court of Appeals. That case goes to a regional court and, on further review, to the Court of Criminal Appeals. Understanding that boundary keeps a client from hiring the wrong advocate for the wrong court.

Why do so many disputes come to rest at the Court of Appeals? Discretionary review at the top explains most of it. A petition for review must show an issue of statewide importance, a conflict among the intermediate courts, or an error serious enough to justify the high court's attention. Ordinary error, even genuine error, often fails to clear that threshold. The Supreme Court cannot correct every mistake in the system, so it reserves its docket for questions with broad reach. A litigant who wants a second look must win here or live with the result. The pattern rewards those who invest in the first appeal rather than banking on rescue from above.

Transfer rules add a wrinkle worth knowing. The Supreme Court may move cases among the intermediate courts to balance their workloads, and disputes can arise about whether a matter belongs at the Fifteenth Court of Appeals or at a regional court. When placement is contested, the receiving court can decide the question or send the case where it should go. Counsel who misjudges the proper forum risks months of delay while the courts sort out where the appeal lives. Getting the forum right at the notice stage protects the client's calendar and budget alike.

The lesson is plain. This court is frequently the end of the road, and its reasoning binds the parties long after the file closes. That weight makes one threshold question worth close study before anyone drafts a notice of appeal: does the judgment or order even belong at the Court of Appeals? What the court may hear, and by what path a case reaches it, is the subject of the next section.

The jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals comes from statute, chiefly Government Code Chapter 22 as amended by Senate Bill 1045. That grant is exclusive within its assigned categories. When a case fits, the regional courts of appeals lose the power to hear it, and the appeal belongs here alone. Two large groups define the docket. Civil suits in which the state or a state entity is a party form one group. Appeals from the Texas Business Court form the other. Around those two poles the Legislature drew a handful of narrower categories and several exceptions, so the exact edges reward a close read of the current text.

Start with the state-party category. The Court of Appeals hears civil matters brought by or against the state, a state agency, board, commission, department, or an officer or employee of the state sued in an official capacity. A dispute over a permit denial, a challenge to an agency rule, a contract fight with a state university, a tort claim against a state department, each can qualify. The Legislature excepted certain subjects from this reach, and counsel should confirm that a given claim is not carved out before assuming the appeal belongs here. Family law matters and some other specified categories sit outside the grant, and misreading that line sends the notice to the wrong court.

Appeals from the Texas Business Court supply the second stream. The business court, created under Government Code Chapter 25A, handles high-value commercial disputes, governance fights inside companies, and claims under the Business Organizations Code that meet the statute's amount and subject thresholds. The dollar and subject limits in Chapter 25A decide whether a commercial case starts in the business court at all, which in turn decides whether its appeal lands here. When one of those trial judgments is appealed, the Court of Appeals reviews it. That pairing was deliberate: the Legislature built a specialized trial court and a matching appellate forum in the same session, so that commercial appeals would be heard by judges who see them regularly.

Most appeals reach the Court of Appeals as appeals of right from a final judgment, the judgment that disposes of every party and claim. Some orders may be appealed before the case ends. Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 51.014(a) lists interlocutory orders that a party may appeal immediately, including the denial of a governmental unit's plea to the jurisdiction under subsection (a)(8). That provision matters here, because the state's cases turn constantly on immunity and jurisdiction. An early ruling on those questions can be tested at once rather than after a full trial.

Permission opens a second door. Under Section 51.014(d), a trial court may certify a controlling question of law for immediate appeal when an early answer would materially advance the litigation, and the Court of Appeals then decides whether to accept the permissive appeal. Both the trial judge and the court must agree before the appeal proceeds. The device suits cases where a single legal ruling shapes everything that follows, and it spares the parties a trial that a later reversal would erase.

Beyond appeals, the Court of Appeals exercises original jurisdiction over certain writs. Under Government Code Section 22.221, it can issue mandamus to correct a clear abuse of discretion by a trial court within its territory when no adequate remedy by appeal exists. A party who cannot wait for final judgment, because a discovery order threatens privileged material or a court refuses to rule, may seek that relief here. Mandamus is not a substitute for appeal, and the bar for it is high.

The subject mix gives the docket a particular flavor. Because so many cases involve the state, questions of sovereign immunity, governmental immunity, and the reach of the Texas Tort Claims Act recur across the Court of Appeals docket. Administrative-law issues appear often too, from agency rulemaking to contested-case review under the Administrative Procedure Act. The state's briefs are frequently filed by the Attorney General's office, and opposing a well-resourced government appellate team is its own skill. Counsel comfortable with those doctrines will find familiar ground; a generalist may not.

Criminal work barely registers. The Court of Appeals was built for civil subjects, and criminal appeals continue to flow to the regional courts of appeals and, on discretionary review, to the Court of Criminal Appeals. A client facing a criminal appeal should not look here at all. Knowing that boundary keeps a defendant from wasting a deadline on the wrong forum.

Fitting a case into one of these categories is the first task. The second is moving it through the process on time and in the right form. Deadlines, the record, briefing, and the standards the Court of Appeals applies to a verdict all follow rules that leave little room for error, and those mechanics are where many appeals are won or lost before argument.

An appeal to the Court of Appeals begins with a notice of appeal, not a filing in the appellate court itself. Under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 25.1, the appellant files the notice with the trial court clerk, who forwards it. The notice itself is short, but its timing controls everything that follows. Rule 26.1 sets thirty days after the judgment is signed as the ordinary deadline. That window stretches to ninety days if a party timely files a motion for new trial, a motion to modify the judgment, a request for findings of fact, or a motion to reinstate. Miss the deadline and the Court of Appeals loses jurisdiction over the appeal, with narrow exceptions.

Interlocutory and other accelerated appeals run faster. Rule 26.1(b) shortens the notice deadline to twenty days after the order is signed, and the ninety-day extension does not apply. Rule 26.3 allows a fifteen-day grace period if the party files the notice and a motion explaining the delay, though the court need not always grant it. For a governmental defendant appealing the denial of a plea to the jurisdiction, that twenty-day clock is easy to miss and fatal when missed. Calendaring these dates the moment a ruling issues is basic hygiene.

The appellate record comes in two parts. The clerk's record holds the pleadings, orders, and the judgment, while the reporter's record holds the transcript and exhibits from any hearing or trial. Rules 34 and 35 govern what goes in and when it is due. The appellant must ask the court reporter for the reporter's record and arrange payment, and an appellant who fails to request it may be limited to the clerk's record alone. The Court of Appeals decides the case on that record and nothing else. Evidence that never reached the trial court cannot be added on appeal.

Briefing carries the argument. Under Rule 38, the appellant's brief states the issues, the facts with record citations, and the legal argument; the appellee answers; a reply may follow. Rule 38.6 gives the appellant thirty days after the record is filed and the appellee thirty days after that, subject to extensions the Court of Appeals may grant. Rule 9.4 caps the length by word count. The brief is where most appeals are decided, because the justices read it before any argument and often reach a tentative view from the page. Sloppy record cites and unpreserved complaints sink otherwise good positions.

Cases are heard by panels. The Court of Appeals assigns three justices to a case, and their majority decides it. When a question is important enough or a panel decision conflicts with the court's own precedent, the full court may sit en banc under Rule 41.2, and a majority of all the justices then controls. En banc review is uncommon. On a three-member court, the panel and the full bench overlap heavily, which shapes how the en banc mechanism plays out here.

Oral argument is not automatic. A party requests it under Rule 39, and the Court of Appeals decides whether argument would help. When granted, each side gets a set time to answer the justices' questions. Many appeals are submitted on the briefs alone, especially where the record is short and the law settled. Counsel who uses a granted argument to engage the panel's actual doubts, rather than to reread the brief, tends to fare better.

Standards of review decide how much deference the Court of Appeals gives the ruling below, and they often decide the appeal. Pure questions of law, including statutory construction and jurisdiction, get de novo review, with no deference to the trial court. Fact findings face sufficiency review. On legal sufficiency, the court asks whether any evidence supports the finding; on factual sufficiency, whether the finding is so against the weight of the evidence as to be clearly wrong. Discretionary calls, such as evidentiary rulings and many case-management decisions, are reviewed for abuse of discretion, a forgiving standard. The party challenging a finding must also have preserved the point below, or the standard never comes into play. Choosing the right standard and framing the issue to fit it is much of the appellate lawyer's craft.

What can the Court of Appeals do with a verdict? Rule 43.2 lists the options: affirm, modify the judgment and affirm as modified, reverse and render the judgment the trial court should have rendered, reverse and remand for a new trial or further proceedings, vacate, or dismiss. When the evidence is legally insufficient, the court can render judgment for the other side. When it finds only factual insufficiency, it cannot render; it can only send the case back for a new trial. That line often determines whether a reversal ends the fight or restarts it.

There are firm limits. The court does not retry the case. It does not weigh witness credibility, hear new testimony, or take evidence, and it will not substitute its own factual findings for a jury's where some evidence supports the verdict. Preservation controls the rest: a complaint not raised in the trial court is usually waived, and the appellate judges will not reach it. A client should hear these boundaries early, because they govern what any honest appellate lawyer can promise. Setting expectations at the outset protects the relationship as much as the case.

A decision from the Court of Appeals closes one phase and opens a shorter, harder one. The panel speaks through a written opinion. Sometimes a single justice signs it, sometimes the opinion is per curiam, and once in a while a justice writes separately to concur or dissent. Read the whole thing, including the footnotes. The holding binds the parties, and the reasoning may guide later litigants, so the language a client skims past can decide the next motion.

Texas draws a line between two kinds of writings. A published opinion carries precedential weight and guides later panels of the Court of Appeals and the trial courts within its reach. A memorandum opinion resolves the case without adding new law, and under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 47, it is meant for disputes settled by existing rules. Both dispose of the appeal. Only one shapes doctrine. When you read an opinion from the Court of Appeals, note which kind you are holding, because that tells you how far the reasoning travels and whether you can cite it as authority elsewhere.

If the panel got something wrong, the first tool is a motion for rehearing. Under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 49.1, a party files it within fifteen days after the court renders judgment. The motion points to a specific error: an overlooked fact, a misread statute, a controlling case the panel did not address. It is not a place to re-argue the whole brief. Panels rarely reverse themselves. Even so, the motion can be a prerequisite for preserving certain complaints, so counsel weighs it with the next step already in view.

A party may also ask the full Court of Appeals to sit en banc. Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 41.2 allows en banc reconsideration when it is needed to keep the court's decisions uniform or when the question carries exceptional importance. The Fifteenth Court is small, so its en banc practice looks different from the larger intermediate courts, but the mechanism exists. Treat en banc review as an exception. Filing it as a routine second bite wastes credibility that a lawyer may need later.

Beyond the Court of Appeals, the path narrows. Civil cases move by petition for review to the Supreme Court of Texas, the state's highest civil court. Under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 53.7, the petition is due within forty-five days after the court issues its judgment, or after it rules on a timely rehearing motion. Review there is discretionary. The high court takes cases to resolve conflicts among the appellate courts, to settle important questions of state law, or to correct errors of statewide reach. Most petitions are denied, and a denial does not endorse the lower opinion.

Timing and security travel with the appeal. When a money judgment is on review, a party often posts a supersedeas bond under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 24 to suspend enforcement while the case moves upward. Miss that step, and the winner below can begin collecting even as the petition for review sits pending. Counsel should map the bond, the deadlines, and the cost before the opinion issues, not after. The Court of Appeals will not pause enforcement on sympathy alone.

A still narrower door leads to Washington. The U.S. Supreme Court may review a final judgment from the Court of Appeals only when the case turns on a question of federal law, and generally only after the Texas high court has finished with it. 28 U.S.C. 1257 governs that jurisdiction, and Supreme Court Rule 13 sets a ninety-day deadline for the certiorari petition. Federal review is rare. A state contract or property dispute with no federal hook will not qualify, and honest counsel says so rather than sell a theoretical appeal.

When the avenues run out, the Court of Appeals issues its mandate, the formal order that returns the case to the trial court and directs what happens next. If the judgment was affirmed, the trial court enforces it. If the court reversed and remanded, the case restarts within the limits the opinion set. The mandate can trigger new deadlines: collecting a judgment, releasing a bond, resetting a trial date. Read the opinion and the mandate together, because one explains the reasoning and the other tells the clerk what to do.

There is also a sequencing choice that rewards planning. A party can skip rehearing and go straight to a petition for review, or file rehearing first to give the panel a chance and to sharpen the record for the high court. Each route has trade-offs in time and preservation. A lawyer who has argued before the Court of Appeals and briefed petitions to the Supreme Court of Texas can weigh them against your facts rather than reaching for a default.

One practical note on choosing counsel here. This directory lists appellate firms with plan-tier ordering, and we label that ordering openly so a paid placement is never dressed up as a neutral ranking. The tier affects position on the page. It does not change the verification status shown on a profile, and it does not measure how a lawyer will fare before the panel. Judge the appellate record first, then the client reviews, then the placement.

The Fifteenth Court of Appeals hears a defined civil docket: cases involving the state, its agencies, and officials, along with certain constitutional and regulatory disputes the Legislature routed here. That focus, described in the opening section of this guide, changes how you pick a lawyer. A general trial reputation tells you little about how counsel performs on a cold record before the Court of Appeals. The skills differ. So does the audience, which reads briefs closely and asks pointed questions at argument.

Start with admission. Texas keeps no separate appellate roll, so any attorney in good standing with the State Bar of Texas may file and argue in the Court of Appeals. That open door means the license alone signals little about appellate skill. Some lawyers earn Board Certification in Civil Appellate Law through the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, which requires substantial appellate work, peer references, and an examination. Certification is not required to appear before the Court of Appeals, and many capable appellate lawyers are not certified. It is one verifiable marker among several, useful but not decisive.

Look next at real appellate experience, which shows up in the record more than in a bio. Ask how many merits briefs the lawyer has written for this court, and ask to read one. A strong brief states the standard of review early, ties every argument to a preserved complaint, and cites the record with precision. Ask about outcomes on both sides of the docket, because a lawyer who has defended judgments understands how the panel thinks when it wants to affirm. Ask whether the lawyer has handled cases against the state, since that is much of what this court reviews.

Oral argument is its own craft. Not every appeal gets one, and the Court of Appeals may decide many cases on the briefs. When argument is set, you want counsel who can answer a hot bench without losing the thread, concede a weak point without conceding the case, and steer the discussion back to the controlling standard. Ask the lawyer to describe a recent argument before the appellate bench and the toughest question the panel asked. The answer tells you whether the person prepares or improvises.

Talk about fees in concrete terms. Appellate work is often quoted as a flat fee for the brief plus separate charges for the reply, argument, and any petition for review, or as hourly billing with an estimate tied to the record's size. A large trial record costs more to master, because someone must read every page to find the preserved error. Get the scope in writing: which filings are covered, who drafts, who argues, and what happens if the case goes to the Supreme Court of Texas. Clarity here prevents disputes later, and a lawyer comfortable before the judges will quote the work without hedging.

Scope also means honesty about odds. An appeal is not a retrial, and a lawyer who promises reversal before reading the record is guessing. The better conversation names the strongest issue, the standard that governs it, and the realistic range of outcomes, from affirmance to remand. That candor, set early, protects the client the same way the boundaries discussed earlier in this guide do.

This is where verification helps you filter. This directory runs dated, editor-reviewed checks on firms that submit evidence, and published checks appear on their profiles with a name, a plain description of what was reviewed, a status, and the date last confirmed. For a firm you might send to the panel, that means bar standing and licensure are checked against public records rather than taken on faith. You see when the review happened, so a stale result does not pass for a current one.

Use the checks as a starting screen, then verify independently for anything that matters to your case. Confirm the lawyer's standing directly with the State Bar of Texas, and confirm any specialty claim with the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. The directory's editors date each entry precisely so you can judge freshness, but a license can change between reviews. Two sources agreeing is worth the extra minutes when the appeal is expensive and the deadline is fixed by rule.

Tie the choice back to what this court is. The Fifteenth This court sits at a particular point in the Texas system, with jurisdiction over state-facing civil matters and a review that tests preservation and legal error rather than reweighing facts. A lawyer who understands that seat, and who has briefed and argued within it, gives you a straighter read on your chances than a generalist will. Match the counsel to the forum, and check the credential before you sign.

One last habit. Keep your own file of deadlines from the moment judgment enters, because the clock for a motion for rehearing and a petition for review runs whether or not counsel reminds you. A good appellate lawyer tracks those dates, and the court enforces them. Knowing them yourself is cheap insurance, and it keeps the relationship honest on both sides.