§ 14.002.Scope of Chapter

The scope provision, and it is drawn by three conditions.

The chapter applies only to an action, including an appeal or original proceeding, brought by an inmate in a district, county, justice of the peace, or small claims court or an appellate court, including the supreme court or the court of criminal appeals, in which an affidavit or unsworn declaration of inability to pay costs is filed by the inmate.

The third condition is the one that defines the chapter. An inmate who pays the filing fee is outside it entirely — the chapter is about litigation at public expense, not about litigation by inmates.

Including appeals and original proceedings closes the obvious gap. A chapter confined to trial court actions would leave mandamus petitions and appeals untouched, and those are a substantial part of the filings the chapter addresses.

The list of courts reaches from justice court to the two highest courts, so there is no level at which the requirements fall away.

Naming the court of criminal appeals is deliberate, since an inmate’s civil filings frequently travel there alongside the criminal ones.

Subsection (b) excludes an action brought under the Family Code.

That exclusion is substantial and easily missed. An inmate’s suit affecting a parent-child relationship, a divorce, or a paternity matter is outside the chapter — no previous-filings affidavit, no grievance exhaustion, no trust account withdrawals.

The reason is the subject matter. Family cases involve the interests of children and spouses who had no part in the incarceration, and a procedural regime designed to discourage filings sits badly there.