§ 143A.0035.Venue and Choice of Law

The procedural companion to the anti-waiver provision.

Notwithstanding any other law, any contract, or any venue, forum selection, or choice-of-law provision in a contract, an action under this chapter against a social media platform shall be brought and maintained in a court in this state, and the law of this state applies.

The notwithstanding clause names the three obstacles a platform’s terms would otherwise present: a venue clause, a forum selection clause, and a choice-of-law clause.

Major platform terms characteristically specify California courts and California law, which would place every claim under this chapter before a court applying the law of a state that has no such chapter.

"Brought and maintained" covers both filing and transfer. A defendant cannot comply with the first half by removing or transferring the case afterwards — the requirement continues through the life of the action.

"A court in this state" is not confined to a state court on its face, though a federal court sitting in Texas would apply its own choice-of-law analysis rather than take direction from this section.

The provision cannot bind another state’s courts, and does not purport to. If a platform sues elsewhere, that forum applies its own rules on forum selection and choice of law — which is what the previous section’s public-policy declaration is addressed to.

Together the two sections attempt to keep these disputes in Texas under Texas law, by the only means a state legislature has: declaring its policy and directing its own courts.