§ 147.008.Sovereign Immunity Not Waived

A standard preservation of governmental immunity, and a necessary one here.

The chapter does not waive any immunity of the state or of a political subdivision of the state or any employee or officer thereof.

The provision is needed because governmental entities were among the largest holders of affected systems. State agencies, cities, counties, school districts and utilities ran the sort of legacy software the problem lived in, and a claim against one was foreseeable.

The chapter creates no cause of action anyway, so this could be read as belt and braces. But the chapter contains an elaborate procedural regime — notice, abatement, inspection, settlement offers — and a claimant might have argued that regime implied claims against governmental units were contemplated.

This forecloses that. A claim against a governmental unit still requires a waiver found somewhere else, principally the Tort Claims Act.

Employees and officers are named separately, so official immunity is preserved alongside the entity’s.

There is a further connection worth noting. The Tort Claims Act carries its own exception for a claim arising from a computer date failure — enacted in the same period, and covering the same ground from the other direction.

So a claimant faces both: no waiver from this chapter, and an express exception in the statute that supplies waivers.