§ 110.005.Remedies

The remedies, and the cap is the provision that shapes how the chapter is used.

Any person other than a government agency who successfully asserts a claim or defense is entitled to declaratory relief, injunctive relief to prevent the threatened or continued violation, compensatory damages for pecuniary and nonpecuniary losses, and reasonable attorney’s fees, court costs, and other reasonable expenses.

Including nonpecuniary losses matters, since the harm from a burden on religious exercise is rarely financial.

The cap is severe and carefully drawn: compensatory damages may not exceed $10,000 for each entire, distinct controversy, without regard to the number of members or other persons within a religious group who claim injury.

Read that limitation carefully. A congregation of a thousand people burdened by the same ordinance shares a single $10,000 recovery.

So damages are not the point of this chapter. The relief that matters is declaratory and injunctive — stopping the burden — and the fee provision is what makes pursuing it possible.

Exemplary damages are expressly excluded.

An action must be brought in district court.

Subsection (d) protects individuals: no action for damages, declaratory or injunctive relief lies against an individual, other than an action against an individual acting in their official capacity as an officer of a government agency.

That confines the chapter to government. A private person cannot be sued under it, and an official is answerable only in their official capacity.

Subsection (e) preserves the inmate provisions of the Government Code and this code’s inmate litigation chapter, so a claim by a person in custody remains subject to them.