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A divided Fifth Circuit let Texas enforce Senate Bill 4 in full on May 29 while the Supreme Court of Texas issued same-day orders on courtroom mask policies, professional-liability certificate pleading in Studio E., and a Heartbeat Act procedural defeat for abortion funds.

A split Supreme Court of Texas capped a late-May Friday with Greystar's per-debtor supersedeas bond construction under Chapter 52 and a conditional mandamus posture favoring Attorney General Paxton against Austin's transit partnership, while May 15 releases tackled extraterritorial minerals jurisdiction and Rule 91a mandamus in In re Home Depot, and the Attorney General pressed new fronts on WhatsApp encryption marketing, Discord child-safety design, TexAM degree authority, and Meta Glasses privacy representations.

The May 17 edition spotlighted the Supreme Court of Texas’s May 8 civil hand-down alongside Attorney General enforcement on vapor-product taxes, municipal incentives, magnet-school admissions, paratransit contracts, consumer data, SB 1851 property-tax letters, jail cooperation with federal immigration authorities, visa-program civil fraud, coordinated antitrust work, and a major healthcare settlement.

The Supreme Court of Texas cleared the Department of State Health Services to resume Delta-8 enforcement while remanding billing-affidavit admissibility in personal-injury practice, as a parallel week of Attorney General filings targeted Freeport chemical releases, Houston-area birth-tourism allegations, H-1B and CDL training sweeps, and an EPIC City fair-housing injunction fight before the Fifteenth Court of Appeals.

The Fifth Circuit sitting en banc cleared Texas’s Senate Bill 4 to take effect while the Texas Supreme Court released a dense Friday civil hand-down touching school-finance injunctions, mandamus practice, and oil-and-gas jurisdiction, alongside an active week of Attorney General enforcement and Travis County hemp-rule litigation.

Houston’s new limits on HPD cooperation with ICE drew a Senate Bill 4 lawsuit from the Attorney General and a state funding ultimatum, while West Texas plaintiffs challenged Big Bend border-barrier plans in federal court and regulators advanced transmission-cost and environmental-enforcement tracks that will shape compliance budgets into summer.

The Court of Criminal Appeals vacated a Harris County death sentence after decades on the row, Travis County paused DSHS smokable hemp rules, SNAP purchase restrictions took effect statewide, and federal subpoenas for voter records spread through Texas counties while Houston’s new ICE cooperation limits collided with state enforcement.

Texas moved multiple legal clocks at once: SB 12 drag-ban enforcement began, the Texas Supreme Court affirmed the Attorney General's civil investigative demand against PFLAG, a cousin's confession intensified capital post-conviction pressure before a scheduled execution, and DSHS set a hard March 31 cliff for smokable hemp while voucher and EPIC land-use fights escalated.

The Fifth Circuit lifted the injunction on Texas's SB 12 drag ban while a federal court simultaneously enjoined SB 664's fake-meat labeling law — the same First Amendment clause producing opposite outcomes in the same week, alongside a certified LLC bankruptcy-exemption question accepted by the Texas Supreme Court.

New Rule 166a summary judgment reforms took effect imposing mandatory 21-day response and 90-day ruling deadlines, while the Texas Supreme Court issued emergency election orders during the March 2026 primary elections.

Launch edition — Legally Brief: Texas is now live.