holding San Antonio Independent School District amenable to suit in federal court under Eleventh Amendment in part because a “judgment against [it] must be paid from the funds of the schoo! district, whether generated locally or appropriated by the State, not from the state treasury”
How later courts described this case
- holding San Antonio Independent School District amenable to suit in federal court under Eleventh Amendment in part because a “judgment against [it] must be paid from the funds of the schoo! district, whether generated locally or appropriated by the State, not from the state treasury”
- holding that prior federal court judgment was not res judicata to later state court action because federal court would have lacked jurisdiction to hear claims based on Eleventh Amendment immunity
- holding that “an independent school district is more like a city or county than it is like an arm of the State of Texas and is amenable to suit in federal court under the Eleventh Amendment”
- explaining that even if all four res judicata requirements are established, “res judicata will not apply if the federal court [] lacked jurisdiction over the omitted state law claims”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Justice SPECTOR,
joined by Justice CORNYN, concurring.
In this cause, we consider whether Charles McKinney could have brought state-law claims against a Texas school district in an earlier federal lawsuit. I agree with Justice Gonzalez that San Antonio Independent School District, like every other independent school district in Texas, is an arm of the state, although I disagree with him as to the judgment that the Court should render in this ease. Because the district court in the earlier federal lawsuit would have been bound by precedent that would not afford Eleventh Amendment immunity to the district, I concur in the Court’s judgment. The majority’s lengthy analysis is, however, purely advisory.
At the time of McKinney’s federal lawsuit, the Fifth Circuit had already decided that Texas school districts are not entitled to Eleventh Amendment immunity. See Lopez v. Houston Indep. Sch. Dist., 817 F.2d 351, 353 (5th Cir.1987). The Fifth Circuit’s hold *285 ing in Lopez is clear: “The [Houston Independent School District] is a local governmental body ... sufficiently distinct from the state to be outside the eleventh amendment.” Lopez, 817 F.2d at 353 . This decision is binding precedent within the Fifth Circuit, and the federal district court in this case would have had no choice other than to follow it. Even if a majority of this Court were to disagree with the Fifth Circuit and conclude that a school district is an arm of the state, the federal district court would not have had the benefit of our views at the time McKinney’s case was before it.
Although the majority acknowledges that Eleventh Amendment immunity is a question of federal law, 936 S.W.2d at 282, the opinion simply ignores a dispositive federal precedent. In this case, Lopez should have ended this Court’s inquiry. Accordingly, I concur in the Court’s judgment, but I do not join its opinion.