§ 106.004.Inapplicability to Certain Claims

An exclusion, and it removes an entire population from the chapter.

The chapter does not authorize a claim for preventive relief against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, an employee of the department, or any other agency, agent, employee, or officer of this state where the claim is brought by a person housed in a facility operated by or under contract with the department and accrued while the person was housed in the facility.

Both conditions must hold, and the second matters. A former inmate may bring a claim that accrued before or after their confinement; what is excluded is a claim arising from the period inside.

The exclusion is broader than the department. It reaches any other agency, agent, employee, or officer of this state, so a claim against a different state body arising during confinement is equally barred.

Only preventive relief is excluded — which is the whole of what this chapter offers, so the exclusion is complete in effect.

The provision belongs to the same family as the inmate litigation chapter, and reflects the same legislative concern about the volume of claims generated inside correctional facilities.

Note what remains available. Federal civil rights claims are untouched by a state statute, and the religious freedom chapter expressly contemplates claims by people in custody — providing for the inmate grievance system to satisfy its notice requirement.

So the exclusion is specific to this chapter rather than a general bar, and a person in custody alleging discrimination is not without a remedy.

Reading it beside the religious freedom chapter is instructive: one legislature excluded inmates from an anti-discrimination remedy and another built a route for them into a religious liberty one.