Warren Kenneth Paxton, Jr., in His Official Capacity as Texas Attorney General, and the State of Texas v. Annunciation House, Inc.

Supreme Court of Texas
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No. 24-0573
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Warren Kenneth Paxton, Jr., in his Official Capacity as
Texas Attorney General, and the State of Texas,
Appellants,

v.

Annunciation House, Inc.,
Appellee

═══════════════════════════════════════
On Direct Appeal from the
205th Judicial District Court, El Paso County, Texas
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Argued January 13, 2025

JUSTICE YOUNG delivered the opinion of the Court.

Justice Sullivan did not participate in the decision.

The attorney general has alleged that Annunciation House, Inc.,
an El Paso-based nonprofit corporation, violates Texas law by harboring
illegal aliens. Invoking his statutory and constitutional authority, he has
sought to examine Annunciation House’s records to verify this allegation
and to initiate quo warranto proceedings that, if the allegations are
proven, could lead to the revocation of Annunciation House’s charter and
preclude it from operating. Bound up in the dispute are a host of serious
questions: What kind of conduct constitutes unlawfully harboring illegal
aliens? Has Annunciation House engaged in such conduct? Under what
conditions may the attorney general demand access to Annunciation
House’s records? Can harboring illegal aliens provide a valid basis for the
attorney general to file a quo warranto action? Does Texas law that
protects religious liberty forbid the attorney general from proceeding
against Annunciation House under these circumstances? And more still.
Ordinarily, before this Court addresses such significant issues, the
parties would have developed a full record and litigated the disputed
questions in the trial court and then the court of appeals, after which the
disappointed side would file a petition for review. This case, however,
comes to the Court as a direct appeal because, very early in the litigation,
the trial court held that several Texas statutes are unconstitutional. We
accordingly must address this dispute far earlier than we typically would.
We conclude that the trial court erred in its constitutional
holdings. We likewise conclude that the court’s related injunctions, which
prevent the attorney general from even filing a quo warranto action, were
premature at best. Our primary holding is that the attorney general has
the constitutional authority to file his proposed quo warranto action,
which simply allows the usual litigation process to unfold. It is too early
for us, or for any court, to express a view about the merits of the
underlying issues. Perhaps the case will terminate quickly based on
evidentiary or legal grounds; perhaps it will go to trial. Perhaps the Texas
Religious Freedom Restoration Act will affect the proceedings in an

2
outcome-determinative way; perhaps that statute will end up playing no
such role. We resolve only what we must to dispose of today’s appeal, and
beyond that, we do not foreclose the case’s development on remand.
I
Annunciation House is a charitable organization based in El Paso,
Texas, that operates several shelters around the city. Founded in 1976,
Annunciation House has long worked with the Roman Catholic Diocese
of El Paso to provide shelter to the homeless, particularly immigrants
and refugees crossing over from Mexico. Called to serve the needy by its
founders’ Catholic faith, Annunciation House provides food and housing
to its guests regardless of their immigration status.
On February 7, 2024, three state officials arrived at one of
Annunciation House’s shelters with a formal “Request to Examine” its
records. The officials informed Annunciation House’s director, Ruben
Garcia, that the request covered a variety of internal files, that production
must be immediate, and that failure to comply would result in forfeiture
of Annunciation House’s right to do business in Texas as well as a criminal
penalty. See Tex. Bus. Orgs. Code §§ 12.155–.156. The officials agreed
that Garcia could consult with an attorney before complying and, after
providing a written copy of the request, departed the premises. Later that
day, Annunciation House’s attorney informed the attorney general’s office
that the shelter would respond to the record request within thirty days;
the attorney general, however, demanded compliance by the next day. In
response, Annunciation House turned to a district court in El Paso County
to request a temporary restraining order and a declaratory judgment that
the request violated Annunciation House’s constitutional rights.

3
The trial court granted the requested temporary restraining order
and set a hearing to consider granting a temporary injunction. The
attorney general then filed a “Plea to the Jurisdiction, Answer, and
Motion for Leave to File [[Proposed]] Counterclaim in the Nature of
Quo Warranto.”
Annunciation House then asked the trial court to extend the
temporary restraining order, and the court granted the request. The court
reset the hearing to March 7, when it would consider Annunciation
House’s requests for declaratory relief and a temporary injunction
alongside the attorney general’s responsive plea to the jurisdiction and
motion for leave to file a quo warranto action. Three days after the hearing,
the trial court held that the Rules of Civil Procedure superseded the
attorney general’s original records request, meaning that any production
of records would now take place subject to discovery requests and rulings.
The trial court stated that this mooted Annunciation House’s requested
injunction against being forced to immediately produce the records.
For the next several months, the parties engaged in discovery
related to the two live pleadings: (1) Annunciation House’s request for
declaratory relief and a temporary injunction against further allegedly
unconstitutional records requests; and (2) the attorney general’s request
for a temporary injunction and his motion for leave to file a quo warranto
counterclaim seeking revocation of Annunciation House’s charter.
While the attorney general’s initial petition and counterclaim relied on
Annunciation House’s failure to comply with the records request, his
amended filings accused Annunciation House of engaging in “systematic
conduct that constitutes illegal alien harboring and operation of a stash

4
house.” On this new ground, the attorney general again requested a
temporary injunction shutting down the shelter’s operations and renewed
his request for leave to file a quo warranto action seeking to revoke
Annunciation House’s charter.
Annunciation House moved for summary judgment. In two orders,
the trial court granted the motion and denied the attorney general’s
requests for an injunction and for leave to file a quo warranto action. In
granting summary judgment, the trial court held that the records-request
statute, codified at Business Organizations Code §§ 12.151–.152, is
facially unconstitutional under the First and Fourth Amendments to the
U.S. Constitution and that the request made of Annunciation House in
particular constituted religious harassment under Government Code
§ 2400.002. The trial court therefore granted declaratory relief and an
injunction in favor of Annunciation House, which included the
requirement that any further records requests first be filed with that
court for precompliance review.
In denying the attorney general’s requested injunction and
motion for leave to file a quo warranto action, the trial court first held
that the attorney general failed to establish the required grounds for a
quo warranto proceeding under Civil Practice and Remedies Code
§ 66.002(d). It then held that the allegations of sheltering undocumented
migrants, even if true, did not constitute illegal harboring under Penal
Code § 20.05(a)(2) or § 20.07(a)(1), citing the Fifth Circuit’s decision in
Cruz v. Abbott, 849 F.3d 594, 597–602 (5th Cir. 2017). The court ruled
in the alternative that §§ 20.05(a)(2) and 20.07(a)(1) are both field and
conflict preempted by federal law, and thus unenforceable, including by

5
means of a quo warranto action.
As to quo warranto generally, the trial court held that Business
Organizations Code § 11.301(a)(5) provides the exclusive means of
terminating a corporation’s existence for criminal violations, thus
abrogating quo warranto in this area. Finally, as applied to Annunciation
House, the trial court ruled that the quo warranto counterclaim would
render both the quo warranto statute (§ 66.001) and the underlying Penal
Code provisions (§§ 20.05(a)(2) and 20.07(a)(1)) unconstitutionally vague
and would also violate the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act
(which we refer to as RFRA) by impermissibly burdening the shelter’s
religious activity. See Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 110.003. Absent a
lawful cause of action, let alone a probable right to relief, the trial court
denied the attorney general’s request to file the quo warranto counterclaim
and the accompanying injunction.
A later order disposed of all other claims, reducing the orders
described above into a final, appealable judgment. The attorney general
appealed both orders directly to this Court, as authorized where “a trial
court grant[s] or den[ies] an . . . injunction on the ground of the
constitutionality” of a state statute. Tex. Gov’t Code § 22.001(c); see also
Tex. R. App. P. 57. We noted probable jurisdiction over the appeal, which
challenges the following five holdings of the trial court:
(1) Business Organizations Code § 11.301(a)(5) abrogates the
attorney general’s authority to bring quo warranto actions;
(2) the attorney general fails to adequately allege violations of
Penal Code § 20.05(a)(2) or § 20.07(a)(1);
(3) those provisions of the Penal Code are unconstitutionally vague
as applied to Annunciation House or are preempted by federal
law;

6
(4) the injunction that the attorney general requested and the quo
warranto action he sought to file violate RFRA; and
(5) Business Organizations Code §§ 12.151 and 12.152 do not
provide for precompliance review and are thus facially
unconstitutional.
We address each argument, turning first to those pertaining to
quo warranto in Part II and then to the arguments about the requested
injunctions and the records request in Part III.
II
This Court has not addressed the nature of a quo warranto action
for more than a century. Given the procedure’s relative obscurity, we
briefly consider its history before addressing the parties’ arguments.
A
The earliest recorded quo warranto actions date from the thirteenth
century, when King Edward I ascended the throne following several
wars between the crown and rebellious barons. As part of a campaign
to reduce feudal power and cement royal control, Edward ordered an
investigation into the baronial “franchises.” 1 W.S. Holdsworth, A
History of English Law 87–88 (3d ed. 1922). “Franchises,” which were
then called “liberties,” “were a miscellaneous lot,” characteristically
difficult to systematize given the feudal context in which they arose;
“[m]ost liberties,” however, “gave their owners the right to perform some
[royal] function” or to “take some profit which normally belonged to the
King.” Donald W. Sutherland, Quo Warranto Proceedings in the Reign
of Edward I, 1278-1294, at 2–3 (1963). Motivated to claw back his royal
privileges (and, perhaps more importantly, the profits they reaped),
Edward “sent out commissioners to enquire into these usurpations of

7
the royal rights.” 1 Holdsworth, supra, at 88.
When the supposed abuses of royal power were documented,
Edward’s need for a new legal tool to go about righting them led to the
first well-documented use of the writ of quo warranto. Issued by royal
courts or “eyres” traveling throughout England, the writ “enquire[d] by
what authority”—in Latin, quo warranto—a person “who claimed or
usurped any office, franchise, liberty, or privilege belonging to the crown”
maintained his right to do so. Id. at 229–30. Absent some proof of that
right, usually in the form of a charter directly from the crown, or upon
proof of “either mal-user or non-user,” the eyre would revoke the claimed
franchise back to the crown. Id. at 89. Following numerous high-profile
revocations, and amid mounting resistance from aggrieved barons,
Edward relented, first promulgating the Statute of Gloucester in 1278 and
then the Statute of Quo Warranto in 1290. Id. at 88. Together, these
allowed that proof of “possession [of a franchise] without interruption from
the beginning of Richard I’s reign” would adequately answer quo warranto
and avoid revocation. Id. Nevertheless, “[t]he theory of the king and his
lawyers, that no franchise could exist except by virtue of a royal grant,
became the law for the future.” Id.; see also Sutherland, supra, at 167.
Quo warranto lived on well past Edward’s reign, and writs of quo
warranto were issued from the medieval period onward. Over time,
however, the writ of quo warranto gave way to the “information in the
nature of quo warranto.” Comment, Quo Warranto and Private
Corporations, 37 Yale L.J. 237, 238 (1927). The information in the
nature of a writ of quo warranto was, as its name suggests, “originally a
criminal proceeding designed to punish the usurper of a franchise,” akin

8
to the criminal information still used in Texas criminal procedure. See
W.S. Holdsworth, The History of the Criminal Information, 1 Can. Bar
Rev. 300, 301 (1923); see also Ex parte Scott, 123 S.W.2d 306, 311 (Tex.
1939) (collecting cases on the requirement to file “an information or
complaint in writing” in criminal cases). Despite its criminal-law roots,
however, the information in the nature of quo warranto “developed into
a purely civil proceeding” and remains “exclusively” civil today.
Holdsworth, supra, at 302.
The primary advantage of the formal shift to “the information”
from “the writ” was that the attorney general could directly file the
information with the Court of King’s Bench, thus easing the burdens of
the cumbersome traveling eyre and attendant procedure of the old
prerogative writ. Cf. 1 Holdsworth, supra, at 229–30. No other
substantive difference developed, so over time, “the information of quo
warranto . . . became identical in scope with the older remedy, and the
two have for all practical purposes become indistinguishable.” Quo
Warranto and Private Corporations, supra, at 238–39 (footnote omitted).
Under either procedure, defendants had to show “by what authority”
they purported to exercise some governmentally sanctioned power.
As the common law of corporations developed during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, private corporations—which existed only
through express legislative authorization—were also subject to quo
warranto actions. See 9 Holdsworth, supra, at 65 (“That a corporation
could be suspended or dissolved, on proceedings taken against it by the
crown for misuse or abuse of its privileges, was a very old principle of the
common law.”). Blackstone documented this use of quo warranto,

9
triggered by “negligence or abuse of [corporate] franchises; in which case
the law judges that the body politic has broken the condition upon which
it was incorporated,” necessitating a quo warranto action “to enquire by
what warrant the members now exercise their corporate power, having
forfeited” it. 1 William Blackstone, Commentaries *473. This
understanding of corporate law and quo warranto subsequently followed
English lawyers to the American colonies. Several colonies, in fact, were
founded as corporations, subject to quo warranto proceedings by the
crown. Cf. Viola Barnes, The Dominion of New England: A Study in
British Colonial Policy 23 (1923). Famously, the Court of King’s Bench
under Charles II issued a writ of quo warranto against the Massachusetts
Bay Colony, thus revoking its charter in 1683 amid a period of friction
with the crown. See id.
Quo warranto survived the American Revolution, too, with the
People replacing the king as sovereign and a concomitant emphasis not
on the abuse of a royal privilege but on a corporation’s “special contractual
relationship with the incorporating state.” Herbert Hovenkamp, The
Classical Corporation in American Legal Thought, 76 Geo. L.J. 1593,
1659 (1988). Nevertheless, forfeiture of a corporate charter (or
“franchise”) remained a possible result of quo warranto actions, justified
on grounds of negligence or abuse—that is, the same ground Blackstone
had documented in the eighteenth century. 1 Blackstone, supra, *473.
As Justice Story put it in 1815, “a private corporation created by the
legislature may lo[se] its franchises by a misuser or a nonuser[,] . . . and
they may be resumed by the government under a judicial judgment upon
a quo warranto to . . . enforce the forfeiture.” Terrett v. Taylor, 13 U.S. (9

10
Cranch) 43, 51 (1815). Justice Story described this rule as “the common
law of the land” and “a tacit condition annexed to creation of every such
corporation.” Id. On the same theme, Chief Justice Taney referred to
franchises as “special privileges conferred by government upon
individuals, . . . which do not belong to the citizens of the country,
generally, of common right,” meaning that “no franchise can be held
which is not derived from a law of the state.” Bank of Augusta v. Earle,
38 U.S. (13 Pet.) 519, 595 (1839).
Even as corporate law evolved over the nineteenth century, quo
warranto remained a powerful common-law tool for addressing abuse of
corporate charters. But changes in practice followed, too. For example,
fewer corporations were chartered for a single specified purpose like
building a railroad or operating a bank, as was typical in the days of
Justice Story and Chief Justice Taney. More were chartered for general
business purposes. See Hovenkamp, supra, at 1659–62. Accordingly,
“non-user”—or failure to accomplish an express charter purpose—largely
faded away as a ground for quo warranto actions. Id. Nevertheless, in
the face of growing corporate power in the late-nineteenth and early-
twentieth centuries, quo warranto was still generally regarded “as the
sole remedy to test the right of a corporation to exist and to forfeit
corporate charters and franchises on . . . grounds [of misuse or abuse].”
5 Seymour D. Thompson, Commentaries on the Law of Private
Corporations 623 (2d ed. 1910); see also Staacke v. Routledge, 241 S.W.
994, 1000 (Tex. 1922) (“An inquiry into the abuse of . . . corporate power
by the company can only be made by the state.”).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given quo warranto’s long history and

11
ubiquity in Anglo-American law, the doctrine was part of Texas law from
the beginning. In 1840, the Republic of Texas adopted “the Common Law
of England” as the “rule of decision in this Republic” so far as it conformed
to the recently adopted Constitution. Act approved Jan. 20, 1840, 4th
Cong., R.S., § 1, 1840 Repub. Tex. Laws 3, 4, reprinted in 2 H.P.N.
Gammel, The Laws of Texas 1822–1897, at 177–78 (1898). “In [that]
adoption of the common law, we adopted the remedy of quo warranto,
against corporations.” State v. S. Pac. R.R. Co., 24 Tex. 80, 116 (1859);
see also Banton v. Wilson, 4 Tex. 400, 405–07 (1849). Given the attorney
general’s existing common-law authority, no statute directing the filing
of quo warranto actions was necessary, but the legislature nonetheless
both recognized its existence and made bringing a quo warranto
information mandatory in certain circumstances. For example, an 1850
statute establishing the Texana Academy made it the attorney general’s
duty “to file an information in the nature of a quo warranto” if “at any
time the [Academy] shall violate” its charter. 3 Gammel, supra, at 694
(Act of Jan. 2, 1850).
With the adoption of the present 1876 Constitution, the People of
Texas took the further step of constitutionalizing the attorney general’s
power and duty to file quo warranto informations. At the suggestion of
one delegate, George Flournoy, Article IV, § 22 was amended to add the
following to a list of the attorney general’s duties:
and [the attorney general] shall especially inquire into the
charter rights of all private corporations, and from time to
time, in the name of the State, take such action in the courts
as may be proper and necessary to prevent any private
corporations from exercising any power, in demanding or
collecting any species of tax, toll, freight, or wharfage not

12
authorized by law; and shall, whenever sufficient cause
exists, seek a practical forfeiture of such charters, unless
otherwise expressly decreed by law.
Debates in the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1875, at 163–64 (Seth S.
McKay ed., 1930). This text was slightly modified before its adoption, to
“prevent any private corporations from exercising any power or demanding
or collecting any species of tax . . . not authorized by law,” and to separate
off the final clause as a standalone sentence, beginning with “He shall,
whenever sufficient cause exists, seek a judicial forfeiture of such
charters, unless otherwise expressly directed by law[.]” Tex. Const. art. IV,
§ 22. The recorded debates do not illuminate any motivation for the
original amendment or the subsequent edits. The only further relevant
discussion appears to have concerned the fear of another delegate—John
Stayton, a future chief justice of this Court—that the new duty “would be
burdening the office of [attorney general] too much.” Debates in the Texas
Constitutional Convention of 1875, supra, at 164. In other words, there is
at least some basis for understanding the original public meaning of § 22
as authorizing a commonplace—rather than rarely exercised—power.
Just six months after the Constitution’s promulgation, the
legislature statutorily directed the attorney general to exercise his new
constitutional authority. Entitled “[a]n [a]ct to provide for the judicial
forfeiture of charters, and prescribing the duties of the Attorney-General
in relation thereto,” the statute’s first section largely copies Article IV,
§ 22’s text. Compare 8 Gammel, supra, at 1148 (Act of Aug. 21, 1876),
with Tex. Const. art. IV, § 22. Importantly, however, the statute also
tracked the Anglo-American quo warranto practice described above by
specifying the two traditional grounds for charter forfeiture: “mis-user

13
or non-user” by the corporation. 8 Gammel, supra, at 1148. The statute
therefore confirms both that Article IV, § 22, though not using the words
“quo warranto,” was originally understood as constitutionalizing a quo
warranto authority, as well as that this authority was substantively the
same one long recognized at common law. See Am. Indem. Co. v. City of
Austin, 246 S.W. 1019, 1023 (Tex. 1922) (“Legislative construction and
contemporaneous exposition of a constitutional provision is of substantial
value in constitutional interpretation.”).
Three years later, the legislature enacted “[a]n act to prescribe the
remedy and regulate the proceedings by quo warranto,” which shed
further light on what Article IV, § 22 empowered the attorney general to
do. 9 Gammel, supra, at 75 (Act of July 9, 1879). The act authorized the
attorney general to “present a petition to the district court . . . for leave to
file an information in the nature of a quo warranto” on certain grounds.
Id. This authority was triggered if, among other things, “any . . . persons
shall act within this state as a corporation without being legally
incorporated, or any incorporation does or omits any act which amounts
to a surrender or a forfeiture of its rights and privileges as a corporation,
or exercises power not conferred by law.” Id. “[I]f such court or judge
shall be satisfied that there is probable ground for the proceeding,” the
act continued, “the court or judge may grant the petition and order the
information to be filed and process to issue.” Id.
The act’s articulation of the grounds for quo warranto mirrored
§ 22 by treating separately “exercis[ing] power” generally and specific bad
acts, such as “charg[ing] an extortionate rate for the transportation of any
freight or passengers, or refus[ing] to draw or carry the cars of any other

14
railroad company over its line as required by the laws of this state.” Id.
But either predicate action by the corporation was unlawful (whether “not
conferred by law” or not in compliance with “the laws of this state”) and
could serve as grounds for a quo warranto information. Id.
With only minor reorganization, this portion of the 1879 act
persists today as codified at § 66.001 of the Civil Practice and Remedies
Code. That provision lies at the heart of the case now before us, as the
attorney general relies on § 66.001(4) and (5) as grounds for the quo
warranto counterclaim he seeks leave to file against Annunciation House.
See Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 66.001(4), (5) (making quo warranto
available if “a corporation does or omits an act that requires a surrender
or causes a forfeiture of its rights and privileges as a corporation” or if
“a corporation exercises power not granted by law”).
Although the statute has not greatly changed in the century and a
half since the 1879 act, corporate law has shifted away from state control
and toward shareholders as the primary investigators of corporate
malfeasance. See Hovenkamp, supra, at 1658. While the 1879 act
allowed an action to be brought “either of [the attorney general’s] own
accord or at the instance of any individual relator,” 9 Gammel, supra, at
43 (Act of July 9, 1879), shareholders today have many other tools to hold
a corporation to account, so quo warranto has fallen into relative disuse
as a tool for corporate supervision. Even so, quo warranto actions against
private corporations are still filed by the attorney general in the lower
courts, albeit more rarely, with one prominent example being the attempt
to enjoin allegedly extortionate rates for telephone services by
Southwestern Bell Telephone Company. See State v. Sw. Bell Tel. Co., 526

15
S.W.2d 526, 531 (Tex. 1975) (citing Article IV, § 22 as authority for the
attorney general to maintain the suit); see also id. at 533 (modifying the
trial court’s injunction granted in favor of the attorney general pursuant to
his Article IV, § 22 authority). This Court has also ruled on quo warranto
actions several times throughout the twentieth century by “refusing” writs,
thus affording several appellate courts’ opinions concerning informations
the same precedential value as a decision of this Court. See, e.g., State
v. Dilbeck, 297 S.W. 1049 (Tex. Civ. App.—Austin 1927, writ ref’d).
Aside from corporate malfeasance—the basis for quo warranto
actions the attorney general brings under Article IV, § 22—informations
in the nature of quo warranto also continue to be filed in other areas, such
as challenges to improper usurpation of an elected office, see State ex rel.
McKie v. Bullock, 491 S.W.2d 659, 661 (Tex. 1973), or unlawful annexation
of territory by a municipality, see Mobil Oil Corp. v. Matagorda County
Drainage Dist. No. 3, 597 S.W.2d 910, 912 (Tex. 1980). Even then,
however, quo warranto must still be pursued governmentally; where it is
available, we recently reiterated that “the writ is exclusive and can only
be brought by the attorney general, a county attorney, or a district
attorney.” In re Dallas County, 697 S.W.3d 142, 152 (Tex. 2024); see also
Alexander Oil Co. v. City of Seguin, 825 S.W.2d 434, 436 (Tex. 1991) (“The
only proper method for attacking the validity of a city’s annexation of
territory is by quo warranto proceeding, unless the annexation is wholly
void.”). Moreover, the Texas Constitution and state law currently
authorize direct actions seeking a writ of quo warranto in this Court, see
Tex. Const. art. V, § 3(a); Tex. Gov’t Code § 22.002(a), although we appear
to have entertained such requests on only a few occasions, always

16
denying the writ when we have done so, see, e.g., State ex rel. Angelini v.
Hardberger, 932 S.W.2d 489, 490–91 (Tex. 1996) (collecting previous
cases and then denying the writ).
* * *
Summing up, quo warranto’s common-law pedigree stretches back
nearly eight centuries. That a corporate charter could be revoked via quo
warranto “was the common law of the land” in the early United States,
and in Texas too, through our State’s adoption of the common law and by
virtue of statutory enactments. More than that, those who framed and
ratified our 1876 Constitution saw fit to elevate to a constitutional level
the attorney general’s twin powers to inquire into the misuse of charter
rights and to file legal actions addressing such misuse. Finally, the
legislature has provided important context on what those duties include
by providing statutory grounds for quo warranto to address a variety of
corporate misdeeds. Neither the constitutional provision nor the statute
has been materially modified for nearly 150 years.
B
It is with this history of quo warranto in mind that we turn to the
parties’ arguments regarding whether the trial court properly denied the
attorney general leave to file an information. We proceed in four main
steps:
• First, we address Annunciation House’s arguments that other
provisions of Texas law have displaced the attorney general’s
authority to pursue quo warranto in this case. We conclude
that they have not.
• Second, we turn to whether the asserted insufficiency of the
evidence of an underlying violation of the Penal Code made it
proper to deny the attorney general leave to even file a quo

17
warranto action here. We explain the proper standard for
assessing motions for leave and conclude that evidentiary
arguments like the ones raised here are premature and thus
not a proper basis for the trial court to deny leave.
• Third, we address whether RFRA requires the early termination
of proceedings ordered below. Even if RFRA turns out to play
a significant role in this case—an outcome that we by no means
foreclose—its role is not to stop the attorney general from even
filing the information, at least under circumstances like those
here.
• Finally, we address whether leave to file quo warranto should be
denied in this case because the statute underlying the attorney
general’s quo warranto filing is preempted by federal law or is
unconstitutionally vague. We find no merit in either contention.
Before explaining these holdings, we emphasize what is not
pending before the Court: any question about Annunciation House’s
actual conduct or whether Annunciation House’s corporate charter should
be revoked. It bears repeating that we review only the denial of the
attorney general’s motion for “leave to file” a quo warranto action—a
filing that would only begin the legal process for the attorney general to
seek revocation. In other words, the question before us is whether the
district court properly refused to allow the attorney general even to
initiate the litigation process that may potentially lead to revocation.
Our holding that the attorney general may begin the process of seeking
charter revocation says nothing, therefore, about whether the attorney
general will be entitled to that relief or even how far the case will
proceed before the question is resolved through the normal process of
litigation. See S. Pac. R.R. Co., 24 Tex. at 119 (“Whoever must exercise
this preliminary right, its exercise is not conclusive; for the facts that
determine the forfeiture, must be ascertained through the judiciary, ‘by

18
due course of the law of the land.’ ” (citation omitted)).
Said more simply, the question reduces to whether the attorney
general may file a lawsuit. Framed that way, our answer—that the
attorney general may do so—should sound rather unremarkable. Our
holding is limited to that narrow question. Direct appeals, in particular,
warrant deciding no more than absolutely necessary; going beyond that
would short-circuit the normal appellate process to which the parties will
be entitled based on the results of any proceedings on remand.
With these important caveats, we turn to the parties’ arguments
regarding purported obstacles to the filing of a quo warranto information
against Annunciation House. We begin with those arising from the
Business Organizations Code and the Civil Practice and Remedies Code.
1
The trial court held that Business Organizations Code § 11.301(a)(5)
“supplants” the attorney general’s power to bring a quo warranto action for
illegal corporate acts. It also held that the attorney general failed to plead
any of the grounds for quo warranto informations provided in Chapter 66
of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code. We do not read the text of
§ 11.301(a)(5) to sweep so broadly, nor that of Chapter 66 to cover so little,
so we disagree with both holdings. Even if we had any doubts, moreover,
the doctrine of constitutional avoidance would resolve them against the
district court’s conclusions because Article IV, § 22 requires that
legislative withdrawal of quo warranto authority be stated “expressly.”
a
Section 11.301(a)(5) allows a court to “enter a decree requiring
winding up of a filing entity’s business and termination of [its] existence

19
if, as the result of an action brought under Section 11.303,” the court finds
that the “public interest requires winding up and termination of the filing
entity” based on three criteria listed in subparts (A), (B), and (C). Tex.
Bus. Orgs. Code § 11.301(a)(5)(A)–(C). These criteria are that “the filing
entity has been convicted of a felony” or “a high managerial agent” has
been “convicted of a felony committed in the conduct of the filing entity’s
affairs”; that “the filing entity or . . . agent has engaged in a persistent
course of felonious conduct”; and that “termination is necessary to prevent
future felonious conduct of the same character.” Id. In the trial court’s
view, by creating this scheme governing the dissolution of a corporation
for felonious conduct, the legislature impliedly precluded the attorney
general from achieving the same goal through a quo warranto action.
Annunciation House makes the same argument in this Court, describing
§ 11.301(a)(5) as “the Legislature’s policy determination” that a
corporation’s charter may only be revoked after “at minimum . . . a
conviction, not merely an accusation.” (Emphasis omitted.)
Chapter 66, as we have already noted, is the recodified, and
essentially unchanged, 1879 “act to prescribe the remedy and regulate
the proceedings by quo warranto.” Compare Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code
§§ 66.001–.003, with 9 Gammel, supra, at 75 (Act of July 9, 1879). The
only innovation that came with codification was to itemize the stated
grounds for quo warranto by placing them into a numerical list,
subsections (1) through (7). The trial court held that the attorney general
“failed to establish probable grounds for the proceedings under . . .
§ 66.002(d)” of that chapter, referring to the grounds outlined in
§ 66.001(1)–(7). Two of those grounds are relevant here: subsection (4)

20
provides that quo warranto is available if “a corporation does or omits an
act that requires a surrender or causes a forfeiture of its rights and
privileges as a corporation,” while subsection (5) says the same if “a
corporation exercises power not granted by law.” Annunciation House
claims that because neither subsection expressly mentions criminal
activity, the alien harboring alleged by the attorney general cannot be
grounds for quo warranto under Chapter 66 and reliance on such grounds
is therefore impliedly forbidden by it.
Finally, Annunciation House asserts (albeit in a single footnote)
that the attorney general’s Article IV, § 22 powers are irrelevant to the
holdings described above because that constitutional provision does not
authorize bringing quo warranto actions based on predicate criminal acts.
Stated differently, the argument appears to be that we should not hesitate
to read either § 11.301 or Chapter 66 to materially limit the attorney
general’s quo warranto power where criminal acts are concerned, as Article
IV, § 22’s text never granted the attorney general quo warranto authority
over such acts in the first place. On this view, the appeal would present
no constitutional question as to the attorney general’s authority, making
it a matter of pure statutory construction to affirm the trial court’s orders
in this respect. Because this argument would, if accepted, color the rest
of our analysis in Annunciation House’s favor, we address it first.
b
Asked to decide a constitutional provision’s scope, we begin with its
text. In relevant part, Article IV, § 22 provides that the attorney general
shall especially inquire into the charter rights of all private
corporations, and from time to time, in the name of the
State, take such action in the courts as may be proper and

21
necessary to prevent any private corporation from
exercising any power or demanding or collecting any species
of taxes, tolls, freight or wharfage not authorized by law.
He shall, whenever sufficient cause exists, seek a judicial
forfeiture of such charters, unless otherwise expressly
directed by law . . . .
Tex. Const. art. IV, § 22. The provision does not deploy the term “quo
warranto informations,” but neither party disputes that the authority
referred to in Article IV, § 22 is quo warranto authority, as we have
treated it for well over a century. See, e.g., State v. Int’l & Great N. R.R.
Co., 35 S.W. 1067, 1068–69 (Tex. 1896).
Annunciation House asks us to limit Article IV, § 22’s scope by
construing its reference to the “exercis[e]” of “any power . . . not
authorized by law” to cover only “demanding or collecting any species of
taxes, tolls, freight or wharfage.” On that reading, because the alien-
harboring allegations here have nothing to do with illegally charging
tolls, the attorney general’s constitutional authority could not be
implicated by the denial of his counterclaim based on those allegations.
Reading Article IV, § 22 to mean that the attorney general has no
constitutional authority where only criminal conduct is alleged as a
predicate ground for a quo warranto action, Annunciation House argues,
would alleviate any constitutional concerns in this case.
We find such a cramped construction inconsistent with Article IV,
§ 22’s plain text, which empowers the attorney general to “take such
action in the courts as may be proper and necessary to prevent any
private corporation from exercising any power or demanding or collecting
any species of taxes, tolls, freight or wharfage not authorized by law.”
Tex. Const. art. IV, § 22 (emphasis added). The three verbs—“exercising,”

22
“demanding,” and “collecting”—are separated by the conjunction “or,”
and the object of each verb is modified by the final phrase “not
authorized by law.” Each object in the list is so modified—otherwise,
quo warranto would be available whenever a corporation “exercis[es] any
power” at all. The clause therefore separately contemplates the exercise
of a power not authorized by law, the demanding of taxes not authorized
by law, and the collecting of taxes not authorized by law. See Antonin
Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal
Texts 147 (2012) (describing the “series-qualifier” canon of construction).
The text clearly severs “exercising” power from either “demanding” or
“collecting” taxes, and so its plain reading is irreconcilable with
Annunciation House’s proffered interpretation.
We see no reason to abandon the text’s plain import by treating
the latter half of the series—dealing with taxes and tolls—as somehow
constraining the former, which on its face addresses corporate power
generally. Annunciation House also points to a different provision of the
1876 Constitution, which separately contemplated corporations
“demanding . . . charges . . . [not] authorized by law.” See Tex. Const. of
1876, art. XII, § 4 (repealed Aug. 5, 1969). But we think that citation cuts
against Annunciation House’s position. Article XII, § 4 did not mention
the “exercise of power” at all. It dealt only with tolls charged “for the use
of property devoted by the public.” Id. It is difficult to see why the “exercise
of . . . power” in Article IV, § 22 should be read as intrinsically bound up
with that provision’s additional reference to tolls and taxes, given that the
framers overtly treated “exercising” power and “collecting” tolls separately
in differing provisions of the same instrument. And if the exercise of power

23
in Article IV, § 22 refers only to corporate taxation, it would be equally
surprising, just three years after § 22’s adoption, for the legislature to
have treated the two topics separately in the statutory progenitor of Civil
Practice and Remedies Code § 66.001, listing the exercise of power “not
granted by law” and illegal rate-setting as wholly separate grounds for
a quo warranto action. See 9 Gammel, supra, at 75 (Act of July 9, 1879).
In short, we cannot accept Annunciation House’s invitation to read
Article IV, § 22’s text to say so little. As far as we can see, this Court has
not previously needed to opine about whether corporate criminal acts may
constitute the exercise of power “not authorized by law” within Article IV,
§ 22’s ambit. But the logically inverse position—that criminal acts could
somehow be authorized by law—is difficult to accept. Perhaps it is
unsurprising, then, that the supreme courts of other states have held
unanimously from the late nineteenth century onward that violating
criminal law can constitute the exercise of powers not conferred by law.
See, e.g., State v. Neb. Distilling Co., 46 N.W. 155, 159–60 (Neb. 1890);
State v. Fid. & Cas. Co., 42 N.W. 509, 510 (Iowa 1889); State ex rel. Snyder
v. Portland Nat. Gas Co., 53 N.E. 1089, 1090–92 (Ind. 1899); State ex rel.
Monnett v. Cap. City Dairy Co., 57 N.E. 62, 66 (Ohio 1900); see also People
v. White Circle League of Am., 97 N.E.2d 811, 815–16 (Ill. 1951) (collecting
additional cases). We are aware of no exception, and Annunciation House
has cited none.
Notably, several of these cases concerned statutes with wording
nearly identical to Article IV, § 22 and § 66.001 of the Civil Practice and
Remedies Code—that is, contemplating the exercise of power not granted
by law. See Fid. & Cas. Co., 42 N.W. at 510 (“exercising powers not

24
conferred by law”); see also Portland Nat. Gas Co., 53 N.E. at 1090
(“exercises powers not conferred by law”). The holdings can inform our
understanding of Article IV, § 22’s text because they indicate that the
original public meaning of the phrase “exercising any power not
authorized by law” included a corporation’s committing at least some
criminal acts at the time the 1876 Constitution was adopted. Cf. Am.
Indem. Co., 246 S.W. at 1023. This, in turn, means that addressing
criminal acts by corporate entities does not fall outside the attorney
general’s power to “enquire” and to “seek a judicial forfeiture” of corporate
charters protected by the Constitution, but rather is within it. As a result,
that authority is subject only to those limitations “expressly directed” by
the legislature, as Article IV, § 22 makes plain.
We therefore hold that criminal acts are not categorically excluded
as predicates for the invocation of the attorney general’s authority to file
a quo warranto action. Whether all or any criminal acts may be a
predicate is a wholly different question, one we need not resolve in this
case. To the extent that there are valid historical or legal arguments
casting doubt on whether any particular criminal-act predicate does not
fall within the constitutional text, we neither foreclose the question on
remand nor suggest what the answer may be. What we do foreclose is
the argument that Annunciation House successfully advanced below
and defends in this Court: that criminal conduct cannot be grounds for
a quo warranto action.
Annunciation House further argues that it is the legislature, and
not the attorney general, that decides when “sufficient cause exists [to]
seek a . . . forfeiture.” See State v. Farmers’ Loan & Tr. Co., 17 S.W. 60,

25
64 (Tex. 1891) (holding that § 22 “does not determine what facts, in a
given case, will authorize him to bring and maintain a suit or action”); see
also S. Pac. R.R. Co., 24 Tex. at 116 (explaining that the State may
“declare[], by its legislature, that a particular act of malfeasance” requires
forfeiture). In one important sense, of course, the principle undergirding
this argument is surely true: Article IV, § 22 is built on the premise that
the legislature can draw the lines that determine when quo warranto is
mandatory, permissible, or unavailable.
But to prevail, Annunciation House must make the quite different
argument that quo warranto is not available under Article IV, § 22 until
the legislature specifies that particular acts constitute “sufficient cause.”
The attorney general, in response, argues that the determination of
sufficient cause is within his discretion. We largely agree with the
attorney general: “sufficient cause” in Article IV, § 22 refers to his
discretion under existing law without depending on specific
determinations by the legislature, so long as the legislature has not
clearly withdrawn a particular kind of action from quo warranto’s reach.
We have already rejected essentially the same argument
Annunciation House makes here in State v. Teachers Annuity Life
Insurance Co., 149 S.W.2d 318 (Tex. Civ. App.—Beaumont 1941, writ
ref’d). There, in a “suit to decare void and to cancel [a] corporate charter,”
the attorney general alleged that an insolvent life-insurance company
had unlawfully secured its capital stock with equity in real estate instead
of property permitted by an insurance statute. Id. at 318. The insurance
company argued that the attorney general had no power to bring a quo
warranto action on the basis of the insurance-statute violation, as

26
“complete regulatory power and control of insurance companies and the
business of insurance in general” was vested in a “Board of Insurance
Commissioners.” Id. at 320. The Beaumont Court of Appeals disagreed
and, quoting Article IV, § 22, held that it is “the duty of the Attorney
General to seek judicial forfeiture of corporate charters ‘whenever
sufficient cause exists.’ ” Id. In line with our analysis above, the court
held that “[t]he general authority so conferred is limited only by the added
proviso ‘unless otherwise expressly directed by law’ ” and persists “unless
and until the legislature expressly provides otherwise.” Id. (quoting Tex.
Const. art IV, § 22). But more importantly for our present purpose, it
further held “that the attorney general . . . has the power to determine
the existence of ‘sufficient cause.’ ” Id. We subsequently approved of this
analysis by refusing the ensuing writ, adopting the opinion as binding
precedent. See id. at 318.
Teachers Annuity thus held almost the polar opposite of
Annunciation House’s position on the availability of quo warranto: that,
rather than awaiting legislative authorization, the attorney general’s
authority to investigate corporate charters via quo warranto actions
exists until expressly limited by legislative enactments, and that
determining sufficient cause to file an action is within his sole discretion
where no such limitation forecloses it. See id. at 319–20. This grant of
discretion sits comfortably with the principle found throughout our case
law that “as the chief legal officer of the state, [the attorney general] has
broad discretionary power in conducting his legal duty and responsibility
to represent the State,” power that may not lightly be second-guessed by
coordinate branches of government. Terrazas v. Ramirez, 829 S.W.2d

27
712, 721–22 (Tex. 1991) (first citing Tex. Const. art. IV, § 22; and then
citing Tex. Gov’t Code § 402.021); see also Maud v. Terrell, 200 S.W. 375,
376–77 (Tex. 1918); Lewright v. Bell, 63 S.W. 623, 623–24 (Tex. 1901).
On this point, we recently reiterated that “the office of the attorney
general ‘is one of ancient origin,’ ” whose “powers have deep roots” and
whose “duties remain ‘multifarious, necessarily involving at all times the
exercise of broad judgment and discretion.’ ” Webster v. Comm’n for Law.
Discipline, 704 S.W.3d 478, 495 (Tex. 2024) (alterations incorporated)
(quoting Charles Scribner’s Sons v. Marrs, 262 S.W. 722, 727 (Tex. 1924)).
Webster was not a quo warranto case, but its holding implicated the
attorney general’s core authority to exercise constitutionally conferred
discretion in filing pleadings on behalf of the State. See id. at 483–84. The
attorney general’s discretion to file pleadings can only be more firmly
protected in the context of quo warranto, where “inquir[ing] into the
charter rights of corporations” and seeking revocation in court is an explicit
power conferred by the constitutional text, see Tex. Const. art. IV, § 22, as
opposed to the implicit power of “judgment and discretion” that we
recognized in Webster, see 704 S.W.3d at 495. This protection undergirds
the reasoning of International & Great Northern Railroad Co., where we
held that Article IV, § 22 was sufficiently protective of the attorney
general’s quo warranto authority as to make it exclusive. See 35 S.W.
at 1068–69. Thus, even if district or county attorneys may invoke quo
warranto for some purposes, the legislature may not authorize them (or
anyone other than the attorney general) to do so for investigating
corporate malfeasance. See id. We are not called upon, of course, to
reaffirm or contextualize that particular holding—but it does show the

28
Court’s longstanding recognition that the attorney general starts with a
strong presumption of exclusive authority where quo warranto filings
are concerned.
Taken together, the foregoing reflects that the constitutional text,
our long-standing precedent, and the historical record all confirm the
attorney general’s constitutional authority to seek charter revocation via
quo warranto actions on various grounds that can include violations of
criminal law. To be sure, that authority is subject to general legislative
oversight in that the legislature may require quo warranto informations to
address any “particular act of malfeasance,” S. Pac. R.R. Co., 24 Tex. at
116, or “expressly direct[]” that quo warranto is unavailable in certain
cases, see Tex. Const. art. IV, § 22. But the attorney general’s power to
bring a quo warranto action does not require any separate legislative
authorization or determination that “sufficient cause” exists to exercise
it. As a matter of constitutional law, then, our inquiry at this early stage
thus reduces to whether the trial court’s orders preventing the exercise of
that authority relied on a limit “expressly directed by law.” Id.
c
To answer that question, we first note that Article IV, § 22’s
“unless otherwise expressly directed by law” provision is apparently
unique within our Constitution, unambiguously mandating a clear-
statement rule for restrictions on the attorney general’s quo warranto
power. Clear-statement rules are no rare creature in constitutional law,
of course, but they are generally adopted by the judiciary where the
required clarity “ensure[s] that the government does ‘not inadvertently
cross constitutional lines.’ ” West Virginia v. EPA, 597 U.S. 697, 742

29
(2022) (Gorsuch, J., concurring) (quoting Amy Coney Barrett, Substantive
Canons and Faithful Agency, 90 B.U. L. Rev. 109, 175 (2010)).
But here, the Constitution directly imposes a clear-statement rule,
presumably to prevent either the legislature from unintentionally
abrogating the attorney general’s quo warranto authority or the judiciary
from broadly reading statutes as impliedly limiting that authority in the
absence of “express[] direct[ion] by law.” Broadly reading any statute to
limit, let alone to entirely abrogate, quo warranto risks treading not only
on the attorney general’s authority, then, but on the Constitution’s
independent safeguard of that authority behind its clear-statement rule.
Accordingly, erroneously reading a statute to impair that authority would
be an error of constitutional magnitude, and we will not adopt a statutory
reading that risks such an impairment if another plausible reading is
available. Cf. Borgelt v. Austin Firefighters Ass’n, 692 S.W.3d 288, 303
(Tex. 2024) (“The doctrine of constitutional avoidance . . . require[s] us to
give . . . a construction that steers clear of such constitutional difficulties
unless the text foreclose[s] that construction.”). For Annunciation House
to show its exemption from quo warranto scrutiny by virtue of a
legislative enactment, the statute it invokes must be inescapably clear.
The statutes offered below for this purpose are § 11.301 of the
Business Organizations Code and Chapter 66 of the Civil Practice and
Remedies Code. We address each in turn.
Beginning with § 11.301 of the Business Organizations Code, we
note that nothing in that provision mentions the kind of authority
described by Article IV, § 22—that is, quo warranto authority. The statute
does not state that the contemplated “judicial winding up” procedure

30
constitutes a quo warranto action or that it has entirely replaced such
actions when the predicate for bringing them arises under criminal law.
It shares no language with Article IV, § 22 or Chapter 66. We struggle to
see how statutory silence in § 11.301 as to the attorney general’s Article
IV, § 22 authority could possibly qualify as a limitation “expressly
directed by law,” satisfying that provision’s clear-statement rule.
To the contrary, § 11.301’s silence about any intent to limit quo
warranto authority makes it unlikely that it could overcome the canon
that “statutes will not be interpreted as changing the common law unless
they effect the change with clarity.” Scalia & Garner, supra, at 318. If
§ 11.301 cannot even meet that far lower standard, namely that its
“ ‘express terms or necessary implications’ . . . indicate clearly the
Legislature’s intent to abrogate” the attorney general’s common-law quo
warranto authority, Forest Oil Corp. v. El Rucio Land & Cattle Co., 518
S.W.3d 422, 428 (Tex. 2017) (emphasis added) (quoting Cash Am. Int’l
Inc. v. Bennett, 35 S.W.3d 12, 16 (Tex. 2000)), it certainly cannot satisfy
Article IV, § 22’s demand that the withdrawal of authority be “expressly”
stated. The trial court therefore erred in concluding that § 11.301
expressly limits the attorney general’s quo warranto power, much less
entirely “supplants” it.
Annunciation House contends that construing § 11.301(a)(5) not
to abrogate quo warranto actions based on alleged criminal acts leads to
absurd results. See Malouf v. State ex rels. Ellis, 694 S.W.3d 712, 718
(Tex. 2024) (stating that courts “apply the common, ordinary meaning
of [a statute’s] words ‘unless the text supplies a different meaning or the
common meaning leads to absurd results’ ” (citation omitted)). If quo

31
warranto revocation is available even where the criminal acts would not
allow winding up under § 11.301(a)(5), the argument goes, an acquitted
corporation could be closed through quo warranto but not under
§ 11.301(a)(5). If so, Annunciation House claims, an acquitted
corporation would be easier to close than a convicted one, creating an
absurd and inequitable imbalance.
We disagree with the premise and see no circumstance in which
quo warranto’s existence alongside § 11.301(a)(5) creates absurdity. The
two legal pathways are distinct. If § 11.301(a)(5) applies, a corporation is
never better off to be convicted rather than acquitted; quo warranto
proceedings, in turn, do not depend on there being any actual criminal
prosecution at all. Moreover, as the attorney general emphasizes,
§ 11.301 is part of a larger scheme within Chapter 11 of the Business
Organizations Code, which largely governs when the secretary of state—
the official primarily responsible for the filing of corporate charters—
must recognize or effect the winding up of a corporate entity. Reading
§ 11.301(a)(5) as creating a limited, mandatory mechanism to revoke
charters because of criminal activity, shared between the attorney
general and the secretary of state subject to Chapter 11’s unique
structure, strikes us not as absurd but as consonant with our duty to
harmonize statutes and to interpret them “in a manner that avoids
constitutional infirmity.” Quick v. City of Austin, 7 S.W.3d 109, 115 (Tex.
1998). Because § 11.301 does not even “expressly” limit quo warranto,
we again cannot agree with the trial court’s holding that the provision
entirely “supplants” the attorney general’s quo warranto authority.
Turning to Chapter 66, we note that the chapter both mentions quo

32
warranto and clearly addresses the attorney general’s Article IV, § 22
powers. But it is not styled as a limitation on quo warranto and has never
been so understood since its initial adoption in 1879. See supra Part
II.A (discussing the statute). Instead, it expressly authorizes such
proceedings on particular grounds. See Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code
§ 66.001 (“An action in the nature of quo warranto is available if . . . .”).
Unlike the silent § 11.301, then, § 66.001 presents a more straightforward
case for the expressio unius canon of construction, at least making it
plausible that, by “expressing [several items] of [the] commonly
associated group” (here, the several grounds for quo warranto), the
statute meant to “exclude[] [others] left unmentioned” (here, criminal-law
violations). See United States v. Vonn, 535 U.S. 55, 65 (2002). Expressio
unius, however, relies on “[t]he force of . . . negative implication,” Marx v.
Gen. Revenue Corp., 568 U.S. 371, 381 (2013) (emphasis added), and is of
little use where the Constitution itself recognizes only a positive
limitation—that is, that only a limitation that is “expressly directed” will
do, Tex. Const. art. IV, § 22.
Even assuming for argument’s sake that § 66.001 can (and does)
impliedly forbid any unmentioned grounds for quo warranto, that would
still not justify rejecting the filing here. Recall that one of § 66.001’s
grounds—namely, subsection (5)’s reference to the exercise of “power not
granted by law”—is worded identically to the key language in Article IV,
§ 22 (and to other late-nineteenth century quo warranto statutes
discussed above, including the 1879 act). We have already held that the
phrase “exercising any power . . . not authorized by law” in Article IV,
§ 22 does not categorically exclude violations of the criminal law. Put

33
differently, Article IV, § 22 does not foreclose criminal acts from being
predicate grounds for a quo warranto filing, and any limits on the quo
warranto authority that might exist because of nearly identical language
in Chapter 66 obviously may not have that result either. We therefore
cannot affirm the trial court’s order holding that the attorney general
failed to plead a “probable ground” for a quo warranto counterclaim
merely because that claim relied on criminal acts.
* * *
Both inherently under the common law and expressly under Article
IV, § 22, the attorney general has substantial discretion to file quo
warranto actions, and this authority does not categorically exclude actions
predicated on alleged corporate criminal-law violations. The power
existed at common law until “expressly reserved,” S. Pac. R.R. Co., 24 Tex.
at 121, and exists in Texas as a matter of constitutional law “unless
otherwise expressly directed by law,” Tex. Const. art. IV, § 22. But the
power to seek quo warranto can be exercised only through the courts,
which must ultimately decide whether charter revocation is warranted;
merely filing an action does not itself entitle the attorney general to that
remedy. See S. Pac. R.R. Co., 24 Tex. at 119; see also Farmers’ Loan & Tr.
Co., 17 S.W. at 64 (holding that “the final inquiry must in all cases be made
in and through the courts, as to whether . . . the corporation has exercised
a power not given by its charter or the general laws of the state”).
Applying these principles here, we hold that the attorney general
acted within his constitutional authority when he sought leave to file a
quo warranto counterclaim based on alleged criminal acts by Annunciation
House. Because § 11.301 does not expressly limit the attorney general’s
quo warranto authority, and because the attorney general complied with

34
any limitation imposed by Chapter 66 of the Civil Practice and Remedies
Code, neither statute justifies rejecting the counterclaim’s filing, and the
trial court erred in reaching the contrary conclusion.
2
Annunciation House next argues that even if violations of the
alien-harboring statute may serve as predicate grounds for a quo
warranto action, the attorney general failed to adequately allege such a
violation here. On this point, the parties vigorously dispute the evidence,
but weighing the evidence is improper at this preliminary stage. As we
explain, whether to grant leave to the attorney general to file a quo
warranto action presents a legal question: whether the petition on its face
fails as a matter of law. Evidentiary questions or debates about how legal
requirements apply to the facts are therefore outside the scope of the
initial decision to grant leave to file. The usual tools of litigation exist
in the quo warranto context, too; as in all other cases, those tools may
generate early resolution of a quo warranto action.
Notably, the parties have not cited a decision of this Court that
followed a trial court’s denial of leave to file—as far as we can see, every
case has started with the trial court granting leave. We are not surprised
by that imbalance because granting the attorney general’s request for
leave to file a claim within his core constitutional authority should be the
norm. Cf. Webster, 704 S.W.3d at 500. Quo warranto’s additional
procedural requirement—to seek leave to file—is unaccompanied by
specific guidance about the contents or requirements of initial filings from
either Article IV, § 22 of the Constitution, Chapter 66 of the Civil Practice
and Remedies Code, or our rules of procedure. As the Austin Court of

35
Appeals has aptly observed, “no statute, rule, or caselaw explicitly
requires the State to verify its petition [for quo warranto] or support it
with evidence.” State v. City of Double Horn, No. 03-19-00304-CV, 2019
WL 5582237, at *4 (Tex. App.—Austin Oct. 30, 2019, pet. denied).
Most of these matters can be handled by analogizing to civil
litigation generally. Long ago, when confronted with whether quo
warranto’s quasi-criminal origins affect how an information is to be
treated procedurally, this Court clarified that it “is to be treated as a
civil suit” subject to “the rules of practice” in general use. Davis v. State
ex rel. Wren, 12 S.W. 957, 958 (Tex. 1889). And as to assessing a motion
for leave in particular, this Court has at least provided basic guidance.
In Hunnicutt v. State ex rel. Witt, we distinguished between evidence
adduced in seeking simply to file an information and the merits of the
quo warranto action itself, holding that the former “establishes no facts
on which the merit of the [latter] rests; these must be established by
evidence on final trial.” 12 S.W. 106, 108 (Tex. 1889). Crucially, we
concluded, the attorney general’s “official statement, unsworn, would be
sufficient to authorize a judge” to file the requested information. Id.
Consistent with this premise, the courts of appeals appear to
uniformly apply a sufficiency-of-the-pleadings standard, in which “the
trial court must accept as true the allegations contained in the State’s
petition . . . and ‘need only find that the petition stated a cause of action
to proceed.’ ” City of Double Horn, 2019 WL 5582237, at *4 (quoting
Ramirez v. State, 973 S.W.2d 388, 393 (Tex. App.—El Paso 1998, no pet.));
see also State ex rel. Manchac v. City of Orange, 274 S.W.2d 886, 888 (Tex.
App.—Beaumont 1955, no writ) (“If the petition sought to be filed state[s]

36
a cause of action, the court [is] in error in refusing permission to file it.”).
We approve this standard as consistent with our case law, the
statutory requirements of Chapter 66, and the larger context of civil
litigation in general and quo warranto actions in particular. The current
statute requires only a “probable ground for the proceeding” to justify
filing. See Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 66.002(d). Filing the action
merely opens the door to the litigation process, which requires probative
evidence for the attorney general to prevail. See Hunnicutt, 12 S.W. at
108. A motion for leave is therefore not an opportunity to litigate the
entire case before it is even filed. Rather, it authorizes a limited facial
attack to weed out filings that, due to some legal defect, cannot survive
even though the court assumes the truth of the allegations.
Though deferential, this standard is not a mere rubber stamp on
the attorney general’s motion for leave. If a requested quo warranto filing
alleges no conduct that Texas law actually proscribes, for example, the
trial court may deny leave to file. In at least one case, we held that the
trial court was too generous in granting leave for just that reason. See
Queen Ins. Co. v. State ex rel. Att’y Gen., 24 S.W. 397, 406–07 (Tex. 1893)
(reversing a trial court’s grant of leave to file where the conduct
complained of did not state a violation of the antitrust statute on which
the attorney general relied).
Moreover, the legislature—although it must do so “expressly,” Tex.
Const. art. IV, § 22—remains at liberty to materially limit or abolish quo
warranto in any given circumstance. A motion for leave to file a quo
warranto action should be denied if, on its face, it falls within such an
express legislative prohibition. Leave could similarly be denied if the face

37
of the filing shows a violation of an unambiguous venue requirement or
other legal mandate.
In other words, there are multiple ways in which a filing might fail
to “state[] a cause of action” for which quo warranto is available. See City
of Orange, 274 S.W.2d at 888. If for that or other reasons the attorney
general cannot establish that “there is probable ground for the
proceeding,” Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 66.002(d), the trial court may
deny leave to file.
In comparing this filing hurdle to various pretrial dispositive
motions, we do not, of course, prejudge how any properly filed pretrial
dispositive motion would fare with respect to the sufficiency of the
attorney general’s factual or legal allegations. Precisely because the
choice to allow a quo warranto filing requires such deference and
pretermits the kind of factual and legal scrutiny that will come later,
granting leave to file such an action has no preclusive effect on a court’s
consideration, for example, of a Rule 91a motion. All such ordinary tools
of civil litigation remain available to any target of a quo warranto action.
Many of those procedural devices, like Rule 91a motions, are
comparatively new and were not available during most of quo warranto’s
history in Texas, so it is not surprising that our cases do not mention
them. Contemporary litigation, including in this context, must be
governed by the prevailing rules of procedure.
Returning to the present case, most of Annunciation House’s
evidentiary arguments are therefore beside the point at this early stage.
Annunciation House briefed this appeal almost as a miniature trial on
the merits, asking that we assess (among other things) whether the

38
Fourth Amendment right to privacy applies to Annunciation House’s
premises or may be asserted by the shelter’s director to defeat an alien-
harboring charge. We may not resolve those questions on a direct appeal
from the denial of leave to file, and we are particularly hesitant to do so
where our jurisdiction was invoked by altogether separate defects in the
trial court’s injunctive rulings. Instead, for purposes of this appeal, we
must take as true what the attorney general has alleged in his pleadings
and decide only whether those allegations “state a cause of action”
allowing quo warranto to proceed based on an alien-harboring charge.
City of Orange, 274 S.W.2d at 888.
Turning to the pleadings, we take the attorney general to allege
that Annunciation House (1) provides shelter to illegal aliens; (2) is aware
that many of its guests are illegally present; (3) refuses to cooperate with
law enforcement or permit law enforcement to enter its shelters at all to
protect its illegally present guests from detection; and (4) purposefully,
knowingly, and systematically shields illegal aliens from detection.
Annunciation House protests that the allegations in fact amount to
merely providing shelter to migrants, not doing what the statutes
actually forbid: knowingly “encourag[ing] or induc[ing] a person to enter
or remain in this country in violation of federal law by concealing,
harboring, or shielding that person from detection.” Tex. Penal Code
§ 20.05(a)(2); see also id. § 20.07(a)(1) (making it an offense to “use any
real estate . . . or other property” to violate § 20.05).
Annunciation House is certainly correct on one point, as the
attorney general now agrees: that merely providing shelter to persons who
happen to be migrants, regardless of their legal status, does not violate

39
the alien-harboring statute. Both parties cite Cruz v. Abbott, in which the
Fifth Circuit made an Erie guess that “harboring” under the statute
“requires some level of covertness well beyond merely renting or providing
a place to live.” 849 F.3d at 599. Characterizing the attorney general’s
allegations as criminalizing “merely . . . providing a place to live” to
migrants, Annunciation House claims the conduct the attorney general
alleges cannot be criminal, and thus cannot support the motion for leave,
under Cruz’s limiting construction of the alien-harboring statute.
We agree with Annunciation House’s premise but not its
conclusion. In our view, Cruz correctly read the alien-harboring statute’s
scope as not including the mere provision of shelter. Cruz was an Erie
guess, but an informed one, and it reasonably credited the legislature
with knowing that the language it enacted has been repeatedly used in
other statutes and repeatedly given a construction that goes beyond
providing the essentials of life to someone:
This court interprets the words “harbor, shield, or conceal,”
which appear in a federal immigration statute, to mean that
“something is being hidden from detection.” We recently
reaffirmed our understanding of that language in Villas at
Parkside Partners v. City of Farmers Branch, 726 F.3d 524,
529 (5th Cir. 2013) (en banc). Although our precedent is not
binding on Texas courts when interpreting Texas statutes,
it is reasonable to assume that the legislature was aware of
these decisions. A number of other circuits have interpreted
similar language to suggest that something is being hidden
from detection.
Id. at 600 (internal citation and footnotes omitted). We confirm that in
adopting the alien-harboring ban, the legislature did not purport to
criminalize the mere provision of food, shelter, or other means of survival,
but it instead criminalized knowing efforts to thwart the detection of

40
those illegally present in our country—which is what harboring is. The
line may occasionally seem thin or blurry, but at least in principle, as the
State concedes, the distinction between harboring and merely providing
shelter is real.
That reading of §§ 20.05(a)(2) and 20.07(a)(1) may, as the facts
develop, require resolving the case for Annunciation House. But not yet,
because we read the attorney general’s petition below and his briefs in
this Court to paint Annunciation House as violating the statute as Cruz
interpreted it. We take the attorney general to allege a case of
“hamper[ing] authorities from finding any of the illegal aliens
[Annunciation House] . . . serve[s],” as well as “tak[ing] steps to help the
aliens evade ‘detection’ by the authorities,” precisely as Cruz
contemplated. Id. at 602.
Annunciation House protests that, in context, what the attorney
general characterizes as intentional and purposeful concealment is
nothing more than the provision of shelter and the reasonable assertion
of Fourth Amendment rights. The problem, however, is that weighing
competing views of the evidence, let alone the merits of any constitutional
objections based on a particular view of the evidence, is premature. We
hold that the attorney general’s allegations of violations of the alien-
harboring statute are sufficient to satisfy § 66.002(d)’s “probable ground”
requirement. The trial court erred by denying leave to file the quo
warranto action on this ground.
Of course, as the case proceeds on remand, all the usual
evidentiary objections, along with the ability to marshal evidence in its
defense, will be available to Annunciation House. As with a ruling on a

41
pretrial dispositive motion, our taking these allegations as true at this
stage hardly suggests that they are all accurate or that they will be
proven. See Hunnicutt, 12 S.W. at 108. But the question before us is
simply whether the case may be filed in the first place, and the asserted
insufficiency of the allegations does not provide a basis to deny the
attorney general leave to do so.
3
The trial court ruled that a quo warranto action based on the alien-
harboring statute was also impermissible under RFRA. Annunciation
House, joined by several amici, defends that ruling in this Court because
“[c]losing Annunciation House would substantially burden its free
exercise of religion” and because “closure would not merely ‘significantly
modify’ Annunciation House’s provision of shelter—it would end it.”
Further, Annunciation House argues, such a closure would not constitute
“the least restrictive means to achieve” whatever interest the State might
have. Annunciation House emphasizes its religious affiliation as part of
the Roman Catholic Church and its Catholic mission to help impoverished
migrants. The attorney general argues that, assuming RFRA applies to
quo warranto at all, it is satisfied, including because the State has a
compelling interest in enforcing the immigration laws of this State
against Annunciation House. At the very least, he argues, RFRA’s
application is premature. We conclude that in the present posture of the
case, RFRA is an improper basis for the district court to have denied the
attorney general leave merely to file the quo warranto counterclaim. For
the same reason, it would be improper at this stage for us to further opine
on the significant RFRA issues that the parties so heatedly debate.

42
RFRA applies when “a government agency . . . substantially
burden[s] a person’s free exercise of religion.” Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem.
Code § 110.003(a). To survive RFRA scrutiny, the government agency
must “demonstrate[] that the application of the burden to the person”
both “(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and
(2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that interest.” Id.
§ 110.003(b). RFRA may apply either as an affirmative “defense in a
judicial or administrative proceeding,” id. § 110.004, or as an affirmative
claim, see id. § 110.005(a). Annunciation House invoked RFRA as an
affirmative defense, initially to the attorney general’s records request
and later to the attorney general’s motion for leave to file a quo warranto
counterclaim and request for injunctive relief.
For purposes of today’s decision, we assume without deciding that
applying RFRA’s protections does not conflict with Article IV, § 22’s clear-
statement rule, and we thus presume that RFRA operates just as fully in
quo warranto proceedings as in any other civil-litigation context. But
whether and to what extent RFRA applies in such proceedings are
separate questions from whether the trial court erred when it agreed with
Annunciation House that RFRA compelled it to deny the attorney general
leave to file the quo warranto counterclaim.
At this stage, as we have held, determining whether to grant leave
to file a quo warranto action does not involve weighing the evidence or
reaching the ultimate merits of the claim. We address only whether the
attorney general may even file an information putting his allegations
before the trial court in the first place. The parties’ RFRA arguments, by
contrast, debate this case’s ultimate merits and vigorously dispute

43
specific facts. On the one hand, Annunciation House emphasizes its
mission, its religious motivation, the consequences that might be imposed
if the attorney general could secure the ultimate relief that he seeks, and
similar matters. On the other, the attorney general focuses on the serious
problems at the border, the compelling nature of the government’s
interest, his doubts that Annunciation House’s challenged conduct has a
sufficient nexus to its religious mission, the reasons that he is entitled
to the relief he seeks, and the like.
If the merits of Annunciation House’s affirmative RFRA defense
were before the Court, these arguments would be relevant to our ultimate
determination. As we have confirmed, “RFRA requires that ‘courts
should strike sensible balances, pursuant to a compelling interest test
that requires the Government to address the particular practice at
issue.’ ” Barr v. City of Sinton, 295 S.W.3d 287, 306 (Tex. 2009) (quoting
Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal, 546 U.S.
418, 439 (2006)) (finding “no basis for distinguishing” between RFRA
and its federal counterpart in this regard). The statute “requires the
Government to demonstrate that the compelling interest test is satisfied
through application of the challenged law ‘to the person’—the particular
claimant whose sincere exercise of religion is being substantially
burdened.” Id. (quoting O Centro Espírita, 546 U.S. at 430–31). In other
words, a granular focus on the specific facts, practices, and interests on
both sides is by design inescapable in making a RFRA determination, at
least when such matters are disputed.
The problem with using RFRA to deny leave to file here, therefore,
is obvious. The parties’ RFRA debate focuses on the remedy the attorney

44
general ultimately seeks—shutting down Annunciation House—and the
merits of his request. But the questions before us are not whether the
attorney general can prove that Annunciation House violated the alien-
harboring act or whether, if it did, charter revocation is the proper remedy
under Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 66.003. Necessarily, then, we
cannot resolve any debates about the nature of Annunciation House’s
mission or the State’s interests.
Said differently, the relevant government action for purposes of
applying RFRA here is not the charter revocation that may or may not
arrive, but only the filing of the quo warranto information. Engaging in
litigation is generally not itself the sort of burden that RFRA forecloses—
RFRA purposefully provides a tool to be deployed within litigation. In
this case, it has been invoked as an affirmative defense focusing not on
the mere existence of the litigation but on a potential end result of that
litigation. Undoubtedly, RFRA can be powerful however it is deployed,
and its potency often may be felt quite early. But it is not a tool to convert
a proceeding focused on whether litigation may even commence into one
that reaches and resolves ultimate issues. Were we to say more about
RFRA at this stage, we would have to reach issues that go well beyond
the narrow question of the attorney general’s authority to file a quo
warranto counterclaim—and to do so without the benefit of a sufficiently
developed record or even the refining that ordinarily comes through the
usual litigation and appellate process.
At the same time, we should not be misunderstood as categorically
barring recourse to RFRA early in the litigation process. RFRA need not
be used only defensively but can be invoked as a basis to secure an

45
injunction. RFRA is a testament to Texans’ deep respect for religious
liberty, which may require terminating government action before the
government has had the opportunity to infringe at all. We recently
reiterated as much in Hensley v. State Commission on Judicial Conduct,
which authorized an affirmative RFRA claim to proceed where a state
commission had used a public warning to threaten future adverse action.
692 S.W.3d 184, 185–86 (Tex. 2024). Even then, however, the RFRA
claim—despite being brought affirmatively—had to proceed through the
normal litigation process. See id. at 199–201. RFRA arguments should
be resolved as soon as practicable once an adequate record exists and once
the procedural posture of the case allows the court to proceed to such
merits inquiries. This basic principle of law does not preclude relief in
cases like Hensley, where the initial stages of litigation make clear that
the facts are essentially undisputed, allowing the court to expeditiously
resolve any RFRA questions as a matter of law.
We therefore decline to further address the parties’ distinct RFRA
questions, which may unfold below in the normal course. The parties
have made helpful arguments regarding RFRA in general and in this
case, and we appreciate the valuable contributions of amici, including by
the presentation of oral argument focused on RFRA. We foreclose full
consideration of none of these arguments on remand at any proper stage.
4
The trial court further ruled that even assuming the attorney
general could prove that Annunciation House violated the alien-
harboring statutes, federal law precludes relying on those violations in a
quo warranto information. Specifically, it held that both the harboring

46
and stash-house provisions of the alien-harboring statute are field and
conflict preempted by federal law and unconstitutionally vague as applied
to Annunciation House. Annunciation House defends both rulings.
a
As to field preemption, Annunciation House simply cites Arizona
v. United States, 567 U.S. 387 (2012), without further elaboration in this
Court. As to conflict preemption, Annunciation House points to 8 U.S.C.
§ 1324(a)(1)(A)(iii), the federal alien-harboring statute, asserting that it
is “impossible” to comply with both that provision and Penal Code
§ 20.05(a)(2). Annunciation House also contends that § 20.05(a)(2)’s
enforcement would frustrate “the full purposes and objectives of
Congress.” Arizona, 567 U.S. at 399 (citation omitted).
We assume for purposes of our decision that federal preemption
can be a proper basis for denying leave to file a quo warranto action.
After all, if on the face of the pleadings it is clear that the only asserted
basis for quo warranto is a state law that is unenforceable under the
Supremacy Clause, see U.S. Const. art. VI, cl. 2, then it is hard to see
how the proposed action could state a valid claim. But even adopting
that premise, we disagree with the trial court and Annunciation House
that the Texas alien-harboring statute can be regarded as preempted
and thus bar the filing of this quo warranto action.
First, as to field preemption, “in order to determine whether
Congress has implicitly ousted the States from regulating in a particular
field,” the Supreme Court has “first identif[ied] the field in which this is
said to have occurred.” Kansas v. Garcia, 589 U.S. 191, 208 (2020). The
trial court’s single sentence on preemption is not of much help here, and

47
Annunciation House is similarly vague about what “field” is preempted
in its briefing, mentioning “the federal government’s alien registration
scheme” at one point but otherwise focusing on conflict preemption. Of
course, the alien-harboring statute says nothing about alien registration
and cannot be credibly compared to the preempted statute in Arizona that
criminalized failure to carry federally approved identification. See 567
U.S. at 400. And Annunciation House cannot possibly mean that any
state criminal law touching on immigration whatsoever is preempted, a
view the Supreme Court roundly rejected in Garcia. See 589 U.S. at 212;
see also De Canas v. Bica, 424 U.S. 351, 354–55 (1976) (“But the Court
has never held that every state enactment which in any way deals with
aliens is . . . per se pre-empted by this constitutional power, whether
latent or exercised.”). Even defining the field so narrowly as “anti-
harboring,” the attorney general points out that at least one federal court
of appeals has held that quite circumscribed domain not to be preempted,
reasoning that 8 U.S.C. § 1324 cannot alone be treated as a “framework
of regulation so pervasive” as to oust the states entirely. See Keller v. City
of Fremont, 719 F.3d 931, 943 (8th Cir. 2013) (quoting Arizona, 567 U.S.
at 399). Absent any compelling argument that the alien-harboring
statute treads upon a field within which Congress has forbidden states
to act, we reject Annunciation House’s arguments on that point.
Second, as to conflict preemption, we see this case as analogous to,
and controlled by, Chamber of Commerce of the United States v. Whiting,
563 U.S. 582 (2011). In that case, the Supreme Court upheld an Arizona
statute that mirrored federal law by “prohibit[ing] ‘knowingly’ employing
an unauthorized alien.” Id. at 601 (quoting both 8 U.S.C. § 1324a(a)(1)(A)

48
and Ariz. Rev. Stat. § 23–212(A)). Like the Penal Code provisions at
issue here, the Arizona statute “cover[ed] only knowing or intentional
violations” and “adopt[ed] the federal definition of who qualifie[d] as an
‘unauthorized alien.’ ” Id. at 601, 605–06 (comparing 8 U.S.C. § 1234a(h)(3)
with Ariz. Rev. Stat. § 23–211(11)). Far from a reason to find preemption,
the Supreme Court lauded this close tracking of federal law as showing
that there “[could] by definition be no conflict between state and federal
law as to worker authorization.” Id. at 601; see also Zyla Life Scis., L.L.C.
v. Wells Pharma of Hous., L.L.C., 134 F.4th 326, 335 (5th Cir. 2025) (“If
anything, parallel standards, which ensure that the same primary
conduct is regulated in the same way, pose reduced risk to federal
enforcement priorities as compared to non-parallel standards, which
regulate the same primary conduct in different ways.”). Texas’s alien-
harboring statute is essentially identical in this important respect, as
Penal Code § 20.05(a)(2) forbids only harboring those “remain[ing] in this
country in violation of federal law.”
Annunciation House argues that Whiting is distinguishable, as the
statute there provided for civil rather than criminal penalties and complied
with a federal saving clause allowing for some state regulation. See 563
U.S. at 596 (describing the Arizona law as “comfortably within the [federal]
saving clause”). As we have already noted, Garcia made clear that state
criminal law is not an inherently suspect category in preemption analysis.
589 U.S. at 212. And insofar as Whiting relied on the federal saving
clause, it did so for the express-preemption argument raised there before
separately ruling that the provisions were not impliedly preempted either.
See 563 U.S. at 600 (“As an alternative to its express preemption argument,

49
the Chamber contends that Arizona’s law is impliedly preempted because
it conflicts with federal law.”). Because Annunciation House cannot show
that compliance with both federal law and the alien-harboring statute is
“a physical impossibility,” Arizona, 567 U.S. at 399 (citation omitted), the
statute is not conflict preempted on that ground.
Finally, we turn to whether Texas’s alien-harboring statute
“stands as an obstacle to the . . . full purposes . . . of Congress.” Id.
(citation omitted). “We proceed with great hesitation when asked to
construe statutory text based on the statute’s purpose, particularly when
the statute never expresses its purpose.” Malouf, 694 S.W.3d at 730.
Neither with respect to the particular statute that it invokes, 8 U.S.C.
§ 1324(a), nor federal immigration law more broadly, has Annunciation
House identified a statutory statement of purpose. Instead, it abstracts
a highly generalized congressional purpose of forbidding state roles in
immigration enforcement. We, by contrast, ascertain a statute’s purpose
based on what the statute says rather than how in the abstract we might
describe the motives of the legislative body that enacted it. See, e.g., Univ.
of Tex. at Austin v. GateHouse Media Tex. Holdings II, Inc., ___ S.W.3d
___, 2024 WL 5249449, at *6 & n.64 (Tex. Dec. 31, 2024); Morath v.
Lampasas ISD, 686 S.W.3d 725, 737 & n.42 (Tex. 2024); Gabriel Inv. Grp.
v. Tex. Alcoholic Beverage Comm’n, 646 S.W.3d 790, 798 (Tex. 2022).
Absent that presuppositional guardrail, “implied obstacle preemption
invites judges to imagine what the unexpressed ‘purposes and objectives’
of Congress might have been and speculate about whether there is
tension between those purposes and state law that rises to the level of an
‘obstacle.’ ” Horton v. Kan. City S. Ry. Co., 692 S.W.3d 112, 148 (Tex.

50
2024) (Busby, J., concurring).
Fortunately, however, the Supreme Court has made the analysis
simpler where nebulous “purposes” allegedly foreclose areas of traditional
state power, such as quo warranto proceedings and criminal law. In those
circumstances, “Congress should make its intention ‘clear and manifest’ ”
for such a result to follow. See Will v. Mich. Dep’t of State Police, 491 U.S.
58, 65 (1989) (citation omitted). When examining the statute itself, and
not a purposivist gloss on it, we find the opposite of such a “clear and
manifest” intention. Rather than expressing a “purpose” to wholly
exclude the states from immigration enforcement, or even to achieve that
goal in practice, the statute instead includes an affirmative authorization
of state enforcement of the federal alien-harboring statute in 8 U.S.C.
§ 1324(c), which empowers “all . . . officers whose duty it is to enforce
criminal laws” to make arrests for “a violation of any provision of this
section.” This saving clause includes state officers, who have been
conducting arrests under the federal alien-harboring statute for at least
fifty years. See, e.g., United States v. Olivares, 496 F.2d 657, 659 (5th Cir.
1974) (involving an illegal-alien detention conducted by local El Paso
County law enforcement). Annunciation House claims that enforcing the
statute risks upsetting its working relationship with federal immigration
authorities, but the Supreme Court has clearly distinguished between
“Laws of the United States,” which are protected by the Supremacy
Clause, and “the criminal law enforcement priorities or preferences of
federal officers,” which are not. Garcia, 589 U.S. at 212.
Without more, a state enactment precisely tracking federal law
does not make compliance with both “impossible” or inherently frustrate

51
“the full purposes and objectives of Congress” in enacting the latter,
Arizona, 567 U.S. at 399 (citation omitted), at least where that federal
law already invites state officers to enforce it, see 8 U.S.C. § 1324(c). As
such, we hold that Texas’s alien-harboring statute is neither field nor
conflict preempted such that it could not serve as a plausible basis for
the attorney general’s quo warranto filing.
b
The trial court also held that the alien-harboring statute, as
applied to Annunciation House via the quo warranto information, would
render both that statute and the quo warranto enabling statute
“unconstitutionally vague in violation of due course of law and therefore
unenforceable,” citing Article I, § 19 of the Texas Constitution and
Commission for Lawyer Discipline v. Benton, 980 S.W.2d 425 (Tex. 1998).
The order’s references to only the Texas Constitution, to “due course of
law” (rather than to the federal Constitution’s phrase, “due process”),
and to only a decision of this Court suggest only a state-law basis for the
challenge. Benton, however, turned entirely on federal law, and the
parties’ arguments also primarily cite federal authorities. For example,
the attorney general observes that “Texas courts generally hold [the
Fourteenth Amendment’s due-process clause] to be similar to our State’s
due-course-of-law provision.” Accordingly, without any distinct argument
concerning the scope of the Texas Constitution, we will assume for
present purposes that the anti-vagueness requirements of the two
clauses are the same.
Annunciation House takes the trial court’s vagueness holding to
mean two things. First, it says, applying the alien-harboring statute to

52
Annunciation House on these facts would violate Cruz’s limiting
construction of the statute and deprive the shelter of fair notice of what
the statute means by “harboring.” Second, it contends that allowing the
attorney general to base quo warranto filings on criminal law would
violate the constitutional rule “that a legislature establish minimal
guidelines to govern law enforcement,” and risk unleashing the attorney
general “to pursue [his] personal predilections.” Kolender v. Lawson, 461
U.S. 352, 358 (1983) (citation omitted). The first point is resolved by our
holding that, taken as true, the attorney general’s allegations do fall
within Cruz’s limited definition of “harboring.” Annunciation House itself
argues that adopting that definition “avoids issues of unconstitutional
vagueness,” and we readily agree.
As to the vagueness challenge to quo warranto enforcement of the
alien-harboring statute, we cannot accept Annunciation House’s
constitutional argument. It is undoubtedly true that a statute may be
unconstitutionally vague where “it fails to give fair notice of what conduct
may be punished” and where its “language is so unclear that it invites
arbitrary or discriminatory enforcement.” Tex. Dep’t of Ins. v. Stonewater
Roofing, Ltd., 696 S.W.3d 646, 660 (Tex. 2024). Focusing on the second
part of this formula, Annunciation House argues that permitting the
attorney general to pursue criminal-law violations by corporations in quo
warranto actions vests him with unlimited discretion to conduct a
“standardless sweep” of corporate charters. Kolender, 461 U.S. at 357
(citation omitted). We disagree.
Initially, we note that Annunciation House cites no authority for
the proposition that supporting quo warranto filings with criminal acts

53
violates due process; instead, it relies on cases that involved ordinary
prosecutions like Kolender, civil disputes like Stonewater Roofing, or
attorney sanctions like Benton. Given the long history of quo warranto
actions based on criminal-law violations in American law, see supra Part
II.B.1.b, it is unsurprising that there is no authority for that mechanism’s
categorical unconstitutionality.
Moreover, we do not see the attorney general’s ability to pursue
violations of clearly defined criminal laws either by direct prosecution or
by a quo warranto information as remotely comparable to the blank-check
authority that a vague statute offers—the power to prosecute essentially
anyone for anything. See Coates v. City of Cincinnati, 402 U.S. 611, 614
(1971) (holding unconstitutionally vague an ordinance where “no
standard of conduct is specified at all”). What Annunciation House
declares an unconstitutional grant of sweeping authority is, in our view,
essentially indistinguishable from an ordinary exercise of discretion,
which (although not wholly impervious to attack in certain circumstances)
is usually consistent with due process, as the U.S. Supreme Court has
long held both generally and even in relation to quo warranto specifically.
See United States v. Batchelder, 442 U.S. 114, 124 (1979) (acknowledging
the “settled rule” that “whether to prosecute and what charge to file or
bring before a grand jury are decisions that generally rest in the
prosecutor’s discretion”); see also Standard Oil Co. of Ind. v. Missouri ex
inf. Hadley, 224 U.S. 270, 289 (1912) (“Separate proceedings may be
instituted,—one to secure the civil judgment, and the other to enforce the
criminal law. Both cases may involve a consideration of the same facts;
and evidence warranting a judgment of ouster may be sufficient to

54
sustain a conviction for crime.”).
So long as “the ordinary person exercising ordinary common sense
can sufficiently understand” what a criminal law prohibits, U.S. Civ.
Serv. Comm’n v. Nat’l Ass’n of Letter Carriers AFL-CIO, 413 U.S. 548, 579
(1973), no constitutional vagueness problem arises from the possibility
that either criminal prosecution or quo warranto proceedings may follow.
We therefore hold that neither the alien-harboring statute nor the quo
warranto filing’s reliance on that statute was unconstitutionally vague
as applied to Annunciation House.
* * *
In short, we find no lawful reason to categorically forbid the
attorney general from filing a quo warranto action here. The writ’s long
history, our precedents, and constitutional text confirm that explicit
legislative authorization of the remedy is not a prerequisite to that filing.
Nor does any constitutional doctrine or statutory provision independently
bar the filing. As such, the trial court erred in refusing the attorney
general’s request for leave to file his quo warranto counterclaim, and we
reverse its order doing so.
III
Even that is not enough to finally dispose of this appeal, which
also includes a challenge to the trial court’s order enjoining the attorney
general from submitting any further records requests to Annunciation
House. The trial court held that §§ 12.151 and 12.152 of the Business
Organizations Code, which authorize such requests, are facially
unconstitutional, and the attorney general disputes that conclusion.
The parties also disagree over whether the records-request dispute has
been mooted. We hold that the dispute is not moot and that the statute

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is not facially unconstitutional.
A
First, we consider whether the records-request dispute is moot. If
so, that conclusion would have no effect on the separate dispute over quo
warranto that we addressed in Part II but would affect only the discrete
issue about the injunction concerning records requests.
The attorney general argues that he ceased pressing his records
request to Annunciation House well before the trial court ruled on it, thus
rendering the dispute moot. Alternatively, he argues that a different
trial-court ruling, in which the trial court itself referred to the records
request as “moot,” rendered the records dispute at least “procedurally
moot,” citing our decision in ERCOT, Inc. v. Panda Power Generation
Infrastructure Fund, LLC, 619 S.W.3d 628, 637 (Tex. 2021). Annunciation
House argues that the records dispute is not moot, as the attorney general
remains free to simply file more requests if there is no ruling that deems
the relevant requests unconstitutional.
We agree with Annunciation House that this dispute is not moot.
“Voluntary abandonment” of a challenged action “provides no assurance”
that the action will not recur and typically cannot render a case moot.
Matthews ex rel. M.M. v. Kountze ISD, 484 S.W.3d 416, 419–20 (Tex.
2016); see also United States v. W. T. Grant Co., 345 U.S. 629, 632 (1953).
We see no way to characterize the attorney general’s purported
relinquishment of his records requests below as anything but a
voluntary abandonment of the challenged conduct. That conclusion is
particularly warranted here, where the attorney general simultaneously
claims to have abandoned the challenged conduct and appeals a court

56
order enjoining that conduct. It is not “impossible for a court” to grant
Annunciation House relief from allegedly unconstitutional requests even
as the attorney general pursues his legal right to file such requests in this
very court. See Abbott v. Mexican Am. Legis. Caucus, 647 S.W.3d 681,
689 (Tex. 2022). We hold that the records-request controversy is not moot
and that we therefore have jurisdiction to reach its merits.
B
On the merits, the trial court ruled that the statutes authorizing
the attorney general’s initial records requests to Annunciation House,
codified at §§ 12.151 and 12.152 of the Business Organizations Code, are
facially unconstitutional. It also ordered that any further records
requests to Annunciation House be filed within this litigation, that the
same district court would retain jurisdiction over the case, that the
district court would conduct precompliance review as to any new
requests, and that this injunction would remain in effect for two years.
Because the injunction against further requests was grounded in the
trial court’s constitutional ruling, we turn to that ruling first.
1
Section 12.151 grants the attorney general authority “to inspect,
examine, and make copies, as [he] considers necessary[,] . . . of any
record” of a corporation. Section 12.152, in turn, states that the attorney
general “shall make a written request to a managerial official” when
examining the business of a corporation, “who shall immediately permit
the attorney general to inspect, examine, and make copies” of the relevant
records. (Emphasis added.) It is undisputed that the attorney general’s
agents who initially arrived at Annunciation House produced such a

57
written request and demanded compliance immediately. It is also
undisputed that the agents threatened Annunciation House’s staff with
forfeiture of their corporate charter to secure that compliance, citing the
records-request statute’s penalty provision. See Tex. Bus. Orgs. Code
§ 12.155 (stating that a filing entity that “fails or refuses to permit the
attorney general to examine or make copies of a record . . . forfeits the
right of the entity to do business”).
The controlling case on this question, both parties agree, is City of
Los Angeles v. Patel, 576 U.S. 409 (2015). There, the City of Los Angeles
defended an ordinance requiring that hotel records “shall be made
available to any officer of the Los Angeles Police Department for
inspection.” Id. at 413. Hotel owners who refused to provide that access
could “be arrested on the spot” and face six months in jail and a $1,000
fine. Id. at 421. The City defended this scheme to the hilt, arguing that
the ordinance could not be read to “afford[] hotel operators any
opportunity whatsoever” for precompliance review of any records
requests, as any such opportunity “would [have] fatally undermine[d] the
scheme’s efficacy by giving operators a chance to falsify their records.” Id.
at 421, 427 (emphasis added). The Supreme Court held that the
ordinance was facially unconstitutional because it foreclosed what the
Fourth Amendment required: “an opportunity to obtain precompliance
review before a neutral decisionmaker,” only after which penalties like
arrest could attach. Id. at 420. Without prescribing the exact form such
review must take, the Court firmly rejected the no-review-whatsoever
approach, emphasizing the potential for the unbounded ordinance to “be
used as a pretext to harass hotel operators and their guests.” Id. at 421.

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Annunciation House argues that §§ 12.151 and 12.152 operate
identically to the Los Angeles ordinance and are thus similarly
unconstitutional. Specifically, it argues that § 12.152’s requirement
that “managerial official[s] . . . immediately permit” inspection provides
no opportunity for precompliance review before the penalties outlined in
§§ 12.155 and 12.156 attach, including the drastic penalty of forfeiture
of business privileges. In reply, the attorney general asks us not to read
the requirement to produce records “immediately” literally and to
instead hold that it inherently provides a reasonable time to comply. As
for the availability of precompliance review, the attorney general points
out that Annunciation House received such review here via a protective
order, as authorized by Rule of Civil Procedure 176.6(e), and that such
review is available to any “person commanded to . . . permit inspection
and copying of designated documents.” As the Supreme Court did not
specify the exact form precompliance review must take, see Patel, 576
U.S. at 422–23, the attorney general claims that this procedure satisfies
the Fourth Amendment.
We conclude that §§ 12.151 and 12.152 are not facially
unconstitutional. At the outset, we note that this Court “must construe
statutes to avoid constitutional infirmities.” City of Fort Worth v. Rylie,
602 S.W.3d 459, 468 (Tex. 2020); accord Quick, 7 S.W.3d at 115. As we
read Patel, the opinion does not proscribe administrative subpoenas and
requests generally or even forbid the attachment of penalties for failure
to comply. 576 U.S. at 422–23. Nor do we read the opinion’s categorical
rejection of Los Angeles’s essentially unreviewable records-request
ordinance to mandate cumbersome mechanisms for precompliance

59
review. Id. As the attorney general’s inspection power therefore does not
inherently contravene the Fourth Amendment, the only question before
us is how to read § 12.152’s requirement that inspection and production
occur “immediately” upon a written request.
Both to dispel any specter of unconstitutionality and because it
best interprets the statute within the larger context of Texas law, we hold
that “immediately” in § 12.152 does not exclude the opportunity for
precompliance review before associated penalties attach. Instead, it
mandates the maximum possible expedition, which would be undermined
by a set deadline (such as “within ten days”). Specifically, we agree with
the attorney general that the term cannot reasonably be read literally,
as in requiring compliance “without lapse of time, without delay,” or
“instantly.” Immediately, Random House Dictionary of the English
Language (1987 ed.). Otherwise, no business owner who receives a
written request under § 12.152 could comply—providing physical
documents without even a momentary delay is a physical impossibility.
In other words, the question is not truly whether “immediately” can be
read in the literal sense of “instantaneously,” but what delay is
permissible within the meaning of the term as deployed in its context.
In answering that question, “it is our duty to uphold the validity of
[a] statute if it can be given a reasonable construction that will render
it constitutional.” Rowan Drilling Co. v. Sheppard, 87 S.W.2d 706, 707
(Tex. 1935). And when construing statutes against an existing legal
background, “we presume that the legislature uses statutory language
‘with complete knowledge of the existing law and with reference to it.’ ”
Amazon.com, Inc. v. McMillan, 625 S.W.3d 101, 106–07 (Tex. 2021)

60
(citation omitted). The Fifth Circuit relied on that principle in Cruz, see
supra Part II.B.2, and we make use of it again here. In this context, the
presumption of legislative familiarity requires no great leap. Though
§ 12.152 was originally a provision of the Texas Miscellaneous Corporation
Laws Act, 57th Leg., R.S., ch. 205, art. 5.02, 1961 Tex. Gen. Laws 408, 415,
it was re-enacted as part of the newly organized Business Organizations
Code, see Act of May 13, 2003, 78th Leg., R.S., ch. 182, § 1 sec. 12.152,
2003 Tex. Gen. Laws 267, 408. At that time, Rule 176.6(e) already
governed administrative records requests, so the legislature presumably
understood any requirement that records be produced “immediately” as
subject to background legal principles. And, importantly, Rule 176.6(e)
specifically provided that protective orders may be sought “before the
time specified for compliance.” Tex. R. Civ. P. 176.6(e).
With all that in mind, we do not read the legislature’s decision to
require production “immediately” as one that allows literally no time
whatsoever to comply. Instead, to direct that production occur as soon as
practicable, the statute simply avoids specifying a precise deadline that
governs all cases. That reading allows the attorney general flexibility
in deciding when to mandate compliance—but it does not permit him to
withhold precompliance review altogether, whether by Rule 176.6(e)’s
protective orders or other provisions of Texas law. Nothing in the text
of § 12.151 or § 12.152 restricts that review, by protective orders or
otherwise, nor would we fulfill our judicial duty to constitutionally
construe the statute by placing such a problematic gloss on the text. See
Rylie, 602 S.W.3d at 468. We accordingly hold that §§ 12.151 and 12.152
satisfy the Fourth Amendment’s requirement for precompliance review

61
as outlined in Patel. The trial court therefore erred in holding that these
provisions are facially unconstitutional.
We also note that the trial court grounded its injunction against
further requests in the attorney general’s supposed anti-Catholic bias
against Annunciation House, and it held that the requests ran afoul of
the “Save Chick-fil-A Law” codified at Government Code § 2400.002.
Annunciation House has not defended that ruling in this appeal. In the
record before us, we find no evidence to support the notion that the
attorney general pursued Annunciation House “based wholly or partly
on” the shelter’s association with the Roman Catholic Church or the
Christian faith more generally. Tex. Gov’t Code § 2400.002.
Having already stated the general rule that coordinate branches of
government receive a presumption of good faith, we note that Von
Dohlen v. City of San Antonio specifically applied that presumption to
accusations of adverse action under § 2400.002. 643 S.W.3d 387, 396
(Tex. 2022) (“Rather than assume the City would violate Chapter 2400,
we presume the City would comply with Chapter 2400, until the
contrary is shown.”). Absent any evidence that the attorney general’s
actions were motivated by Annunciation House’s Catholic practices
rather than a suspicion that it violated state criminal law, we disagree
with the trial court that § 2400.002 justified the injunction here.
* * *
Correcting the legal error underpinning the injunction requires
that the resulting injunction be vacated. See Tex. Educ. Agency v. Hous.
ISD, 660 S.W.3d 108, 116 (Tex. 2023) (“A trial court has no discretion to
misapply the law, however, and thus we review its legal determinations
de novo.”). Two extraordinary aspects of the injunction that we vacate,

62
however, warrant further discussion so that they do not affect the case
on remand.
First, we note the injunction’s unusual and broad scope. The trial
court imposed a precompliance requirement on the attorney general with
respect to future efforts to request to examine Annunciation House’s
records. The court then claimed for itself the exclusive authority for the
next two years to supervise such precompliance. “[I]njunctions must be
narrowly drawn and precise.” Holubec v. Brandenberger, 111 S.W.3d 32,
40 (Tex. 2003) (quoting Brown v. Petrolite Corp., 965 F.2d 38, 51 (5th Cir.
1992)). To put it mildly, it is doubtful whether requiring a constitutional
officer of this State to solicit permission from a district court before
exercising his authority to request information relevant to the conduct of
a Texas corporation could satisfy these requirements.
Second, throughout its brief order granting the injunction in favor
of Annunciation House, the trial court chastised the attorney general and
attacked his motivations for investigating Annunciation House. The
court accused him, for example, of using the requests “as a pretext to
justify [his] harassment,” of “cho[osing] to harass a human rights
organization,” and of “selectively interpret[ing] or misus[ing] those [laws]
that can be manipulated to advance his own personal beliefs or political
agenda.” On remand, we remind the trial court of its “duty to extend to
the [attorney general]—a member of a coordinate branch—a presumption
of regularity, good faith, and legality.” Webster, 704 S.W.3d at 501. That
respect is owed to the coordinate branches by every level of the judiciary,
just as the judiciary expects the other branches to respect orders and
judgments that emanate from our branch of government. We do not, of

63
course, ask the trial court to turn a blind eye to any evidence of bias or
wrongdoing if Annunciation House presents it on remand; rather, we
emphasize that courts must begin a case with the “presumption that the
[attorney general], no less than the judiciary, intends to comply with the
Constitution” unless and until evidence of such a serious accusation is
actually presented. Borgelt, 692 S.W.3d at 303.
The injunction largely rests on the constitutional and statutory
errors that we have resolved with respect to Business Organizations Code
§§ 12.151 and 12.152. Formally vacating an injunction for one reason
does not necessarily imply that everything else about the injunction was
proper, as these comments illustrate. Given our disposition, however, we
need not further examine these or other points.
2
Finally, we address the attorney general’s requested injunction to
halt Annunciation House’s operations. We note that the attorney general
has largely abandoned any request for such affirmative relief directly
from this Court as part of this appeal. To the extent the trial court denied
this injunction because of its above-considered rulings regarding quo
warranto’s unavailability in this case, of course, that denial also rested
upon legal error. Tex. Educ. Agency, 660 S.W.3d at 119. Faced with an
injunction denial that was legally erroneous, but without any compelling
argument that such an injunction ought to be granted now, we therefore
reverse and remand the denial of the attorney general’s injunction to the
trial court. Whether the attorney general may receive any injunctive
relief against Annunciation House’s operations, even as he pursues his
information in the nature of quo warranto, is not before us.

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IV
The trial court erred in denying the attorney general leave to file
an information in the nature of quo warranto. The trial court likewise
erred in granting Annunciation House a permanent injunction against
records requests by the attorney general. Finally, the trial court’s order
denying the attorney general’s request for injunctive relief relied on legal
error concerning the nature of quo warranto; should the attorney general
renew that request, the trial court must assess it in light of our holdings.
The judgment of the district court is reversed, the injunction it granted is
vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with
this opinion. We express no view as to the course or outcome of those
further proceedings.

Evan A. Young
Justice

OPINION DELIVERED: May 30, 2025

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