§ 116.002.Certain Settlement Terms Prohibited

Public money settling public claims, on condition that the public not be told — that is the arrangement this section ends.

Three elements must all be present before the ban applies.

First, the settlement is $30,000 or more. Smaller settlements are outside the section.

Second, the money is public. It must be derived from taxes collected by a governmental unit, received from the state, or paid from insurance proceeds under a policy whose premium was itself paid with tax money or state money.

The insurance clause closes an obvious gap. A settlement paid by a carrier is still funded by the public if the public bought the policy.

Third, the settlement conditions relief on silence. The prohibited term requires a party seeking affirmative relief to agree not to disclose any fact, allegation, evidence or other matter to any other person.

Journalists are named in the text — "including a journalist or other member of the media" — which leaves no room to argue that a clause aimed at the press is something other than a nondisclosure condition.

The remedy is severance, not invalidity of the whole deal. A settlement provision entered into in violation of the section is void and unenforceable; the settlement itself stands.

That drafting protects the claimant. A person who settled and gave up a claim does not lose the settlement because the government insisted on a term the statute forbids.