§ 148.004.Liability of Educational Institutions for Certain Actions During Pandemic Emergency

A narrow protection responding to a specific wave of litigation.

Subsection (a) defines "educational institution" expansively: an institution or program that facilitates learning or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, or habits — including a public or private preschool, child-care facility, primary or secondary school, college, or university, and institutions of higher education, public and private, as the Education Code defines them.

The definition reaches well beyond schools, and "program" brings in things that are not institutions at all.

Subsection (b) is the shield: an educational institution is not liable for damages or equitable monetary relief arising from a cancellation or modification of a course, program, or activity if the cancellation or modification arose during a pandemic emergency and was caused, in whole or in part, by the emergency.

"In whole or in part" is the operative phrase, and it is generous. The emergency need not be the only reason, so an institution that had other motives is still protected provided the emergency contributed.

The litigation it addresses is the tuition refund suit. When institutions moved to remote instruction in 2020, students across the country sued for the difference between what they paid for and what they received — usually framed as breach of contract or unjust enrichment.

Naming "equitable monetary relief" alongside damages closes the obvious route around a damages-only bar, since restitution and unjust enrichment are how these claims were commonly pleaded.

Note what the section does not cover. It protects against claims arising from cancellation or modification, not from how an institution conducted what it did provide.