§ 87.0021.Certain Labor Laws Not Affected

A 2021 saving provision, added alongside the amendments that brought employees within the chapter.

Nothing in this chapter affects the applicability of Chapter 406, Labor Code, or an employer's ability to refuse to subscribe to the workers' compensation system.

The provision exists because of what the 2021 amendments did. They made "participant" expressly include an employee, which brought farm workers within a chapter that limits liability for injuries from inherent risks.

That raised an obvious question about the interaction with workers' compensation, and this section answers it: the compensation system is untouched.

Texas is unusual in making workers' compensation optional. An employer may decline to subscribe, and a non-subscriber loses the common law defences — contributory negligence, assumption of the risk, and the fellow servant rule — in an employee's negligence suit.

The second clause preserves that choice. A farm employer may still decline to subscribe, and this chapter does not alter the consequences either way.

The practical effect is that a subscribing employer's employee is in the compensation system, and a non-subscriber's employee sues at common law — with this chapter's inherent-risk limitation available in the second case but the ordinary non-subscriber rules also applying.