W.D.Tex.: Texas Request to Examine Statute fails under Patel

Texas’s Request to Examine Statute (“RTE Statute”; Tex. Bus. Orgs. Code §§ 12.151-12.156) violates Patel. “The issue before the court and, accordingly, this Report and Recommendation are not about whether the Attorney General has a right to request information from corporations doing business within this state. The question addressed is whether the RTE Statute is the proper vehicle with which to request information from filing entities within the state. The Attorney General certainly has this ability; and other statutes continue to serve this purpose in a constitutional fashion—and even would have served his purpose here. With the intervening Supreme Court decision, City of Los Angeles v. Patel, …, the RTE Statute’s plain language precludes a facially constitutional reading. At its most basic level, Patel requires precompliance review for administrative searches, and the plain language of the RTE Statute precludes such review.” Here, the Texas AG sought records of a Boeing subsidiary because of 737Max crashes. Spirit Aerosystems, Inc. v. Paxton, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 219598 (W.D. Tex. Nov. 1, 2024).