§ 110.009.Effect on Rights

Three saving clauses in two subsections, and the last is the most carefully drawn.

This chapter does not authorize a government agency to burden a person’s free exercise of religion.

The reading it forecloses is a real one. A statute saying a burden is permitted where the government shows a compelling interest could be read as granting authority to impose one in that case.

It grants nothing. The compelling interest test describes when the chapter’s prohibition does not apply, not when a burden is authorised — and whatever authority the agency has comes from elsewhere.

The protection afforded is in addition to the protections provided under federal law and the constitutions of this state and the United States.

So the chapter is a floor rather than a ceiling. A claimant with a stronger federal or constitutional argument keeps it, and the chapter’s $10,000 damages cap does not limit a federal claim.

The final clause is precise: the chapter may not be construed to affect or interpret Section 4, 5, 6, or 7, Article I, Texas Constitution.

Those are the state constitution’s religion provisions — the religious tests clause, the oath provision, the guarantee of religious liberty, and the prohibition on appropriations for sectarian purposes.

The reservation keeps the statutory and constitutional questions separate. A legislature cannot interpret the constitution it operates under, and a court construing those provisions is not to take this chapter as a gloss on them.

That matters in both directions. The chapter cannot be used to expand the constitutional guarantee, and its limits cannot be used to narrow it.