Office of the Attorney Gen. v. Weatherspoon
No. 14-0582
Case Summary written by Will Wassdorf, Staff Member.
While an assistant attorney general assigned to the Child Support Division of the Office of the Attorney General (OAG), Ginger Weatherspoon alleged that senior attorneys attempted to coerce her to falsify an affidavit. She believed that this action constituted subornation of perjury, abuse of official capacity, and official oppression. OAG policy dictates that an employee should report potential criminal violations to the division chief who then refers the matter the Office of Special Investigations. Weatherspoon alleges that she followed this policy but that she was nonetheless retaliated against, resulting in her discharge. Weatherspoon sued the Office of the Attorney General under the Whistleblower Act for retaliatory discharge. The Whistleblower Act (the Act) waives the state’s immunity from suit for retaliatory discharge in certain circumstances. In a plea to the jurisdiction the OAG argued that Weatherspoon’s allegations were insufficient to waive immunity. The trial court denied the plea and the Court of Appeals for the Fifth District affirmed.
The Supreme Court of Texas reversed the decision of the court of appeals and dismissed the case based on its holding in Tex. Dep’. of Human Servs. v. Okoli, which the Court decided after the appellate decision in the case at hand. The Court pointed out that the Act protects an employee who makes a good faith report of a violation of the law to an appropriate law enforcement authority. The Court held in Okoli that a policy requiring the reporting of violations to supervisors who subsequently forward complaints to the appropriate law enforcement authority is not sufficient for a good faith belief that the supervisors are in fact themselves an appropriate law enforcement authority. Instead, the law enforcement authority reported to must have outward-looking powers. Because none of the reported-to supervisors had outward-looking law enforcement authority they could not be an appropriate law enforcement authority under the Act. The Court also rejected the argument that following the OAG’s policy of reporting criminal violations to division chiefs did not leave her without a protected way to report the violations because the Act protects exactly these types of actions and the OAG could not rely on an internal policy to act contrary to law. Weatherspoon further argued that the OAG is an appropriate law enforcement authority because the OAG has some capacity to enforce certain laws. The Court reasoned, however, that simply because some OAG divisions have law enforcement authority did not transform the OAG as a whole into an appropriate law enforcement authority.
The Court held that because Weatherspoon’s reports did not meet the requirements of the Whistleblower Act, the OAG’s immunity from suit remained intact and the Court dismissed the case.