“Standing First, TCPA Second”: Jurisdictional Priority in Texas Anti‑SLAPP Interlocutory Appeals

I. Introduction

The Supreme Court of Texas’s per curiam decision in Texas Right to Life and John Seago v. Van Stean, et al. confronts a highly charged backdrop—Texas’s “Heartbeat Act” (Senate Bill 8)—but the opinion itself is deliberately about something else: civil procedure, and specifically, subject‑matter jurisdiction and constitutional standing.

The case arises from pre‑enforcement challenges to the Texas Heartbeat Act, under which private individuals—not state officials—enforce abortion restrictions through civil lawsuits. Various abortion providers, funds, and advocates (the respondents) sued Texas Right to Life and its director, John Seago (collectively, TRTL), seeking to block TRTL from initiating Heartbeat Act suits against them. TRTL responded with:

• a plea to the jurisdiction, asserting the plaintiffs lacked standing; and
• a motion to dismiss under the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA), Texas’s anti‑SLAPP statute, again arguing lack of standing among other things.

The multidistrict litigation (MDL) trial court denied both motions. TRTL took an interlocutory appeal under the TCPA provision permitting appeals from the denial of TCPA motions. The Third Court of Appeals affirmed, holding the TCPA did not apply to the plaintiffs’ claims—and pointedly did not address standing, even though TRTL had squarely raised it.

The Supreme Court reverses. It holds that an appellate court cannot treat a TCPA appeal as a self‑contained merits dispute divorced from jurisdictional requirements. Before addressing the applicability or substance of a TCPA motion, an appellate court must determine whether the trial court had subject‑matter jurisdiction, including whether the plaintiffs have constitutional standing. The fact that the denial of a non‑governmental plea to the jurisdiction is not itself appealable does not relieve an appellate court of this duty when any appeal on the merits (here, the TCPA appeal) is properly before it.

The decision therefore does not resolve the underlying abortion controversy, nor does it decide whether the plaintiffs actually have standing. Instead, it clarifies—and sharpens—a procedural principle with broad ramifications: jurisdictional questions must be resolved first, and anti‑SLAPP machinery cannot operate in a jurisdictional vacuum.

II. Summary of the Opinion

The core holdings of the Court’s opinion can be distilled into several key points:

1. Standing is a constitutional prerequisite to subject‑matter jurisdiction.
   The Court reiterates that standing derives from separation‑of‑powers limits and the open‑courts provision of the Texas Constitution. Without standing, courts lack authority to adjudicate, and any merits ruling risks becoming an impermissible advisory opinion.
2. Appellate courts must address jurisdictional issues—including standing—before reaching TCPA merits.
   The Third Court of Appeals erred by deciding that the TCPA did not apply to the plaintiffs’ claims while ignoring TRTL’s standing challenge. An appellate court “may not move to the merits if even one jurisdictional argument remains unresolved.”
3. The label of the motion is irrelevant; the nature of the issue controls.
   The lack of a statutory right to appeal the denial of TRTL’s plea to the jurisdiction did not excuse the court of appeals from deciding standing. Once any appeal on the merits (here, the denial of a TCPA motion) is properly before the appellate court, the court must ensure subject‑matter jurisdiction, regardless of whether the underlying jurisdictional ruling is independently appealable.
4. “Standing” as used in some prior TCPA cases was not constitutional standing.
   The Court disapproves of conflating constitutional standing with statutory or “right‑to‑sue” issues. It explains that the Third Court’s decision in de la Torre used “standing” in the merits sense (does a statute create a cause of action?), not in the jurisdictional sense. That distinction is critical here.
5. TCPA applicability is a merits question that cannot be reached without jurisdiction.
   Deciding whether the TCPA applies to a claim is itself a merits determination. Thus, a court that has not yet resolved standing cannot constitutionally reach the TCPA’s applicability, much less the clear‑and‑specific‑evidence phase of a TCPA analysis.
6. No TCPA “fees and sanctions” rights can arise if there was never jurisdiction.
   The Court distinguishes its prior decision in State ex rel. Best v. Harper, where a TCPA movant’s entitlement to fees survived mootness because the movant had already prevailed at a time when jurisdiction existed. By contrast, if plaintiffs never had standing, jurisdiction never existed, so no party could ever “prevail” on a TCPA motion, and any request for TCPA fees and sanctions necessarily fails.
7. Directions on remand.
   The Third Court of Appeals must:
   • first decide whether the plaintiffs have constitutional standing (and whether any other jurisdictional defects exist); and
   • if standing is lacking, vacate the trial court’s orders and dismiss the case for want of jurisdiction, without remand; but
   • if standing exists, then proceed to the TCPA merits analysis (beginning with applicability) that it previously conducted prematurely.

III. Detailed Analysis

A. Factual and Procedural Background

1. The Texas Heartbeat Act and private enforcement

Senate Bill 8 (the Texas Heartbeat Act), codified in part at Texas Health & Safety Code §§ 171.204, 171.207, and 171.208, prohibits physicians from performing or inducing an abortion after detection of a fetal heartbeat or without performing a heartbeat test. It is unusual in that:

• only private individuals may enforce it through civil lawsuits; and
• government officials are expressly barred from enforcement.

Prevailing SB8 plaintiffs are entitled to injunctive relief, statutory damages (not less than $10,000 per abortion), costs, and attorney’s fees. The enforcement design intentionally raised complex questions about who may be sued pre‑enforcement, and on what jurisdictional theory.

2. The plaintiffs’ suits and TRTL’s response

Concerned about being targeted under SB8, abortion providers, funds, and individual advocates, including Allison Van Stean and numerous organizational plaintiffs, filed more than a dozen lawsuits against TRTL. They sought to:

• challenge the constitutionality of the Heartbeat Act; and
• obtain injunctions preventing TRTL from filing SB8 enforcement actions against them.

On TRTL’s motion, the cases were consolidated in a multidistrict litigation (MDL) proceeding under Texas Rules of Judicial Administration 13.3 and 13.5.

TRTL then filed:

• a plea to the jurisdiction, asserting the plaintiffs lacked standing and the court therefore lacked subject‑matter jurisdiction; and
• a TCPA motion to dismiss, arguing that the plaintiffs’ suits were “legal actions” based on or in response to TRTL’s exercise of protected speech and petition rights, and again contending that plaintiffs lacked standing—this time styling standing as an “element” the plaintiffs must prove with “clear and specific evidence” under TCPA § 27.005(c).

The trial court denied both motions, implicitly concluding that it had jurisdiction and that the case should proceed. TRTL filed an interlocutory appeal from the denial of its TCPA motion under Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 51.014(a)(12). While that appeal was pending, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overruling Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, but the Texas Supreme Court’s opinion does not rely on Dobbs in any dispositive way; the dispute remains rooted in Texas jurisdictional doctrine and the TCPA.

3. The Third Court of Appeals’ disposition

The Third Court of Appeals:

• treated the interlocutory appeal as confined to the TCPA order; and
• held that the TCPA did not apply to the plaintiffs’ claims.

In reaching that conclusion, the court did not address TRTL’s challenge to the plaintiffs’ standing, even though standing had been raised in both the plea to the jurisdiction and in the TCPA motion, and reiterated on appeal.

TRTL petitioned for review, arguing that the court of appeals was constitutionally obliged to decide standing before addressing the TCPA.

B. Precedents and Authorities Shaping the Decision

1. Standing and subject‑matter jurisdiction

The opinion anchors its analysis in a line of cases emphasizing that standing is a fundamental component of subject‑matter jurisdiction:

• Bland Independent School District v. Blue, 34 S.W.3d 547 (Tex. 2000).
  Blue describes standing as a prerequisite to subject‑matter jurisdiction and explains that lack of subject‑matter jurisdiction can be raised through a plea to the jurisdiction “as well as by other procedural vehicles.” This flexibility underpins the Court’s holding that an appellate court, once seized of any proper appeal, must review jurisdictional issues regardless of the labels attached to the motions below.
• Texas Association of Business v. Texas Air Control Board, 852 S.W.2d 440 (Tex. 1993).
  Texas Association of Business declared that standing may be raised by parties or by courts at any time, and that it is rooted in separation of powers and the prohibition against advisory opinions. The present opinion echoes that principle, warning that addressing TCPA merits without jurisdiction risks unconstitutional advisory rulings.
• Meyers v. JDC/Firethorne, Ltd., 548 S.W.3d 477 (Tex. 2018).
  Cited for the constitutional basis of standing: the separation of powers and the open‑courts provision (Tex. Const. art. I, § 13), which provides access only to a “person for an injury done him.”
• Rusk State Hospital v. Black, 392 S.W.3d 88 (Tex. 2012).
  Rusk is quoted for the proposition that it would “violate constitutional principles” for appellate courts to consider the merits without confirming jurisdiction.
• Rattray v. City of Brownsville, 662 S.W.3d 860 (Tex. 2023).
  Rattray articulates two rules that the Court quotes and applies:
  1. a court may not reach the merits if it finds any valid basis to defeat jurisdiction; and
  2. the court may not proceed to the merits if even one jurisdictional argument remains unresolved.
  These rules directly condemn the Third Court’s decision to bypass the standing question.

2. Distinguishing constitutional standing from merits issues

The opinion heavily emphasizes the modern distinction between constitutional standing and non‑jurisdictional issues sometimes casually labeled “standing”:

• Pike v. Texas EMC Management, LLC, 610 S.W.3d 763 (Tex. 2020).
  Pike, building on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Lexmark decision, clarified that “standing in the true constitutional sense” (injury, traceability, redressability) differs from statutory “zone‑of‑interests” or cause‑of‑action issues that do not implicate jurisdiction. The Court in Van Stean quotes Pike and stresses that TRTL’s challenge is to constitutional standing, not to whether any statute authorizes the plaintiffs to sue.
• Lexmark International, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., 572 U.S. 118 (2014).
  Cited in Pike and again here, Lexmark condemned the imprecise use of “prudential standing” to describe non‑jurisdictional issues. Texas has adopted that vocabulary clarification, and this case is another step in that direction.
• Texas Medical Resources, LLP v. Molina Healthcare of Texas, Inc., 659 S.W.3d 424 (Tex. 2023).
  Molina acknowledges that older opinions used “standing” as shorthand for a plaintiff’s ability to satisfy statutory prerequisites or possess a valid cause of action. The Court calls this “regrettable” because it has blurred the line separating jurisdictional defects from merits problems. Van Stean continues the project of de‑tangling that line.

Against that background, the Court scrutinizes the Third Court of Appeals’ reliance on:

• de la Torre v. de la Torre, 613 S.W.3d 307 (Tex. App.—Austin 2020, no pet.).
  In de la Torre, the court held that a party could not bring an action under Family Code § 261.107 because the statute created no private right of action. Though the Third Court there labeled its analysis “standing,” it was actually answering a merits question: does the statute create a cause of action? The Supreme Court explains that such a question does not implicate constitutional standing and thus can be addressed within the TCPA evidence‑of‑elements framework. By contrast, TRTL’s argument here is about constitutional standing—traceability and redressability—so de la Torre is inapposite.

3. Jurisdiction versus TCPA anti‑SLAPP procedure

The Court has recently addressed the sequencing of jurisdiction and TCPA analysis:

• McLane Champions, LLC v. Houston Baseball Partners LLC, 671 S.W.3d 907 (Tex. 2023).
  McLane Champions describes the TCPA’s “multi‑step analysis” and explicitly holds that standing must be addressed before the TCPA’s substance: “Because standing is a threshold jurisdictional issue that is essential to a court’s power to decide a case, we address that issue before turning to the substance of the TCPA motion.” The Court applies that same sequencing here.
• Diocese of Lubbock v. Guerrero, 624 S.W.3d 563 (Tex. 2021) and In re Diocese of Lubbock, 624 S.W.3d 506 (Tex. 2021).
  In the original proceeding (In re Diocese), the Court held that the ecclesiastical‑abstention doctrine deprived the trial court of jurisdiction over a deacon’s claims arising from his inclusion on a list of clergy credibly accused of sexual abuse. In the companion appeal (Guerrero), the Court held that, because the trial court lacked jurisdiction, the TCPA issues in the interlocutory appeal were moot and vacated the TCPA order.
  Van Stean treats Guerrero as controlling: if jurisdiction is lacking, TCPA questions must be vacated and dismissed. A TCPA motion cannot “create” jurisdiction that was never there.
• State ex rel. Best v. Harper, 562 S.W.3d 1 (Tex. 2018).
  Harper held that a TCPA movant’s claim for fees and sanctions under § 27.009 can “breathe life” into an otherwise moot appeal, but only if the movant prevailed on the TCPA motion before the underlying claim became moot. The Court distinguishes Harper: when standing has never existed, jurisdiction has never attached, so the movant could never have “prevailed” for purposes of fees and sanctions. Thus, the Harper exception does not apply to a no‑standing situation.

The opinion also clarifies that determining whether the TCPA applies to a legal action is itself a merits question. To illustrate the multiple senses of “merits,” the Court cites:

• In re United Services Automobile Association, 307 S.W.3d 299 (Tex. 2010) and Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Environment, 523 U.S. 83 (1998)
  for the observation that “merits” is a term with too many meanings. Some issues (class certification, limitations) are “merits” in a procedural sense, even if they do not resolve liability itself. TCPA applicability is a merits question in this lower‑order sense and thus cannot be reached absent jurisdiction.
• Texas Department of Parks & Wildlife v. Miranda, 133 S.W.3d 217 (Tex. 2004).
  Cited to show that even a plea to the jurisdiction has “merits” in the sense that courts must decide whether to grant or deny it. But that is different from the ultimate merits of the plaintiff’s claims. The Court uses this to differentiate procedural “merits” from jurisdictional prerequisites.

4. Jurisdictional issues in appellate practice

The Court underscores that appellate jurisdiction over one order allows, indeed requires, it to examine jurisdictional questions affecting the entire case:

• Houston Municipal Employees Pension System v. Ferrell, 248 S.W.3d 151 (Tex. 2007).
  Establishes that courts “always have jurisdiction to determine their own jurisdiction.” This legitimizes appellate examination of standing even when the specific jurisdictional ruling is not independently appealable.
• Oscar Renda Contracting, Inc. v. Bruce, 689 S.W.3d 305 (Tex. 2024).
  Reaffirms that courts examine the substance of a motion, not its caption. This is key to the Court’s conclusion that standing can (and must) be considered even if raised by a motion not labeled “plea to the jurisdiction,” and even when the only appealable order is the denial of a TCPA motion.
• Thomas v. Long, 207 S.W.3d 334 (Tex. 2006).
  Held that a summary‑judgment motion could be treated as a plea to the jurisdiction for purposes of appellate jurisdiction. Again, labels do not control.
• Alfonso v. Skadden, 251 S.W.3d 52 (Tex. 2008).
  Reiterates that subject‑matter jurisdiction cannot be waived and may be raised at any time. The Court leverages this to insist that appellate courts must address jurisdiction whenever doubts arise, regardless of when or how the issue is first raised.
• Justice Young’s concurrence in Dickson v. American General Life Insurance Co., 698 S.W.3d 234 (Tex. 2024).
  Quoted for the point that once an appeal on the merits is properly before an appellate court, the court needs “no separate procedural vehicle” to discharge its duty to ensure jurisdiction. The Court’s per curiam adopts this logic as applicable here.

The opinion also invokes federal circuit decisions (I.L. v. Alabama and Richardson v. Koch Law Firm) to underscore counsel’s ethical duty to raise subject‑matter jurisdiction defects when they become apparent, but it notes that jurisdictional defects can be addressed even if belatedly raised.

5. Sanctions and vexatious litigant tools outside the TCPA

To mitigate concerns that defendants lose access to TCPA fee‑shifting when plaintiffs lack standing, the Court reminds litigants of other tools:

• Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 13 – authorizing sanctions for groundless pleadings brought in bad faith or for harassment.
• Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 11.054 – allowing courts to designate individuals as vexatious litigants under defined circumstances.

These devices, unlike TCPA fees and sanctions, do not depend on the existence of subject‑matter jurisdiction over the merits of the claim.

C. The Court’s Legal Reasoning

1. Jurisdiction as an antecedent requirement

The Court begins from the premise that subject‑matter jurisdiction is always antecedent to the merits. Standing, as a component of jurisdiction, must be satisfied before any court—trial or appellate—can decide substantive issues. Proceeding otherwise risks the issuance of advisory opinions and infringes the separation of powers.

Applied here, that means the Third Court of Appeals could not properly decide whether the TCPA applied to the plaintiffs’ claims without first answering whether the plaintiffs had standing. Since TCPA applicability is a merits determination, the appellate court’s decision skipped an essential constitutional step.

2. Why three possible justifications for the court of appeals’ approach fail

The Court identifies and dismantles three likely reasons the Third Court may have believed it could skip standing.

a. Misreading its own precedent in de la Torre

In de la Torre, the Third Court had spoken of “standing” as part of the plaintiff’s prima facie case under the TCPA, addressing it in the second step of TCPA analysis. But the Supreme Court explains that the “standing” at issue there was purely statutory—whether a private right of action existed under Family Code § 261.107—rather than constitutional.

By contrast, TRTL’s challenge in Van Stean goes to constitutional elements of standing, such as:

• whether the injuries alleged are fairly traceable to TRTL’s conduct; and
• whether the requested relief would likely redress those injuries.

These questions, unlike statutory “who may sue” inquiries, directly implicate subject‑matter jurisdiction and must be resolved at the outset. Thus, de la Torre offered no license to postpone the standing inquiry.

b. Accepting TRTL’s framing of standing as a TCPA element

TRTL itself argued that standing should be analyzed “through the lens of the TCPA,” contending that plaintiffs had to come forward with “clear and specific evidence” of standing under § 27.005(c). On that view, the court would first decide whether the TCPA applies; only then would it examine standing as an “element” of the plaintiffs’ claims under the TCPA’s heightened evidentiary standard.

The Supreme Court rejects this structure as putting “the cart before the horse.” The flaw is conceptual:

• To reach the TCPA’s second step (whether the non‑movant established each element with “clear and specific evidence”), the court must already have decided the first step—that the TCPA applies at all.
• But TCPA applicability is itself a merits determination that cannot be performed unless the court already has jurisdiction.

In other words, the TCPA cannot serve as the vehicle for deciding jurisdictional standing. Standing must instead be evaluated under the ordinary rules governing jurisdictional challenges, not heightened or reframed by the TCPA’s evidentiary demands. The Court reiterates that jurisdictional determinations may never be treated as a subset of a statutory merits test.

c. Belief that standing was not reviewable in this interlocutory appeal

The court of appeals emphasized that “this interlocutory appeal concerns only the [trial] court’s ruling on the TCPA motion to dismiss,” noting that Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 51.014(a)(12) authorizes interlocutory appeal from the denial of a TCPA motion but not from the denial of a non‑governmental plea to the jurisdiction.

The Supreme Court responds in two steps:

1. The vehicle is irrelevant; jurisdictional issues travel with any merits appeal.
   Citing Blue and Justice Young’s concurrence in Dickson, the Court holds that once an appeal on the merits is properly pending, the appellate court needs “no separate procedural vehicle” to address jurisdiction. It must do so, regardless of whether the particular jurisdictional ruling is separately appealable.
2. Substance, not labels, controls.
   Touching on Oscar Renda and Thomas v. Long, the Court reiterates that what matters is the jurisdictional nature of the issue, not the caption of the motion. Standing may be raised in a plea to the jurisdiction, a motion to dismiss, a summary‑judgment motion, or on the court’s own initiative—even for the first time on appeal.

Thus, the fact that TRTL could not separately appeal the denial of its plea to the jurisdiction did not absolve the court of appeals from ruling on standing in the course of deciding the TCPA appeal.

3. Standing and mootness—why Harper does not save TCPA fees here

The Court then clarifies the critical difference between:

• a case that becomes moot after jurisdiction initially existed; and
• a case in which standing never existed and thus jurisdiction never attached.

In Harper, the movant had already prevailed on a TCPA motion while the case was still live. When the underlying claim later became moot, the movant’s vested statutory right to fees and sanctions survived. As the Court put it, a TCPA claim for fees and sanctions breathes life into an otherwise moot appeal only “if the party prevailed before the substantive claim became moot.”

Here, by contrast, if TRTL is correct that the plaintiffs never had standing:

• the courts never had subject‑matter jurisdiction at any time; and
• no court could ever have properly declared TRTL a “prevailing party” on any merits issue (including TCPA applicability).

Consequently, Harper’s “breathing life” principle cannot be invoked to adjudicate TCPA merits in a case born jurisdictionally defective. The Court warns against stretching Harper to permit merits rulings where subject‑matter jurisdiction was always absent.

4. Addressing fairness concerns for TCPA movants

The Court acknowledges that denying TCPA fees and sanctions when plaintiffs lack standing may seem unfair, particularly where abusive or retaliatory suits are filed by plaintiffs who never had any legitimate stake in the dispute. Nonetheless, the Court offers three responses:

1. Immediate jurisdictional dismissal serves a key TCPA goal.
   One objective of the TCPA is to expedite dismissal of suits intended to chill free speech and petition activity. A swift jurisdictional dismissal, even without TCPA fees, still achieves the most critical protection—ending the suit.
2. Alternative sanctions and vexatious‑litigant remedies exist.
   Rule 13 and vexatious‑litigant statutes allow courts to deter and punish abusive litigation without requiring jurisdiction over the underlying merits.
3. Separation of powers and constitutional limits trump fee‑recovery equities.
   Allowing courts to reach TCPA merits without jurisdiction in order to award fees would compromise the constitutional rule against advisory opinions and blur the line between judicial and legislative authority.

D. Impact and Implications

1. For Texas appellate practice: jurisdictional primacy is non‑negotiable

This opinion reinforces and extends a consistent message: Texas appellate courts must always decide subject‑matter jurisdiction first, regardless of the procedural posture or the form of the order under review. Several concrete implications follow:

• In any interlocutory appeal (not just TCPA appeals), if standing or another jurisdictional defect is raised or evident from the record, the appellate court must resolve it before addressing substantive or quasi‑merits questions.
• Appellate courts cannot confine their review artificially to “the appealed order” when doing so would require addressing merits issues while jurisdiction remains unresolved.
• Litigants can expect appellate courts to scrutinize standing even if it was not crisply developed below—though counsel remain ethically obliged to raise jurisdictional issues early.

2. For TCPA litigation strategy

For practitioners handling TCPA motions, this case alters incentives and clarifies sequencing:

• Standing challenges cannot be folded into the TCPA’s merits analysis.
  Defendants cannot rely on the TCPA’s “clear and specific evidence” standard to pressure plaintiffs on standing before jurisdiction is confirmed. Standing must be decided under ordinary jurisdictional principles, often on pleadings and limited evidence, and without heightened evidentiary requirements.
• Defendants should consider raising jurisdictional deficiencies separately and early.
  While TRTL raised standing both via plea and TCPA motion, the opinion suggests that courts and litigants should treat jurisdictional issues distinctly and prioritize them procedurally.
• No fee windfall where plaintiffs lack standing.
  Defendants hoping to use the TCPA to both dismiss and recover fees must confront the risk that a successful standing challenge will end their fee claim. In a no‑standing scenario, dismissal is the only permissible outcome.

3. For abortion‑related SB8 pre‑enforcement litigation

Although the Court insists this case is “not about abortion,” its jurisdictional holding will directly shape SB8‑related litigation:

• Plaintiffs seeking pre‑enforcement relief against private actors like TRTL must articulate how those defendants’ conduct is causing, or imminently will cause, concrete injuries that are redressable by court orders. Abstract fears or generalized grievances will not suffice.
• If the court of appeals ultimately finds no standing on remand, that ruling (though not made here) will likely constrain future attempts to sue advocacy organizations pre‑emptively for their alleged intent to bring SB8 actions.
• Conversely, if standing is found, the court of appeals will proceed to the TCPA merits and, eventually, the Texas Supreme Court may confront substantive questions about SB8’s interface with free speech and petition rights under the TCPA framework.

Nonetheless, this particular opinion deliberately sidesteps the post‑Dobbs substantive abortion landscape and focuses on institutional judicial limits.

4. For separation of powers and advisory‑opinion doctrine

The decision is a strong reaffirmation of Texas’s prohibition on advisory opinions. The Court warns that:

• deciding merits questions (including statutory procedural ones like TCPA applicability) without jurisdiction erodes judicial independence; and
• it exposes courts to being drawn prematurely into “highly contentious and politicized debates” absent concrete disputes fit for judicial resolution.

This concern is not limited to abortion; the Court stresses that jurisdictional primacy applies “in every case, ranging from the most banal to the most controversial.” The message is institutional: courts secure their legitimacy by confining themselves to justiciable controversies.

IV. Clarifying Key Legal Concepts

1. Subject‑Matter Jurisdiction

Subject‑matter jurisdiction is a court’s power to hear and decide a particular type of case. It cannot be waived, conferred by agreement, or created by consent of the parties. If a court lacks subject‑matter jurisdiction:

• it has no authority to issue binding decisions on the merits; and
• its only permissible action is to dismiss the case (or, on appeal, to reverse and render a dismissal).

In Texas, subject‑matter jurisdiction is driven by constitutional and statutory grants of authority and by justiciability doctrines like standing and mootness.

2. Constitutional Standing vs. “Statutory Standing”

Constitutional standing refers to three core elements:

1. Injury‑in‑fact – a concrete, particularized injury (or imminent threat of injury);
2. Traceability – the injury must be fairly traceable to the defendant’s conduct; and
3. Redressability – a court order must be capable of meaningfully redressing the injury.

If any of these elements is absent, the court lacks subject‑matter jurisdiction, and the case must be dismissed.

By contrast, “statutory standing” (a misnomer the Court discourages) involves questions like:

• Does a particular statute create a cause of action for this kind of plaintiff?
• Has the plaintiff satisfied statutory prerequisites (e.g., exhaustion of administrative remedies, notice requirements)?

These questions go to the merits, not jurisdiction. A defendant may prevail on them and obtain a merits judgment even though the court has subject‑matter jurisdiction. The Court insists on keeping these categories separate to avoid confusion about when courts may (or may not) reach the merits.

3. Plea to the Jurisdiction

A plea to the jurisdiction is a procedural mechanism used in Texas practice to challenge a court’s subject‑matter jurisdiction. It can:

• assert facial defects in the pleadings (e.g., no alleged injury); and
• raise evidence disputing jurisdictional facts.

But, as the Court points out, jurisdictional challenges are not confined to pleas; they can be raised by other motions or even by the court sua sponte.

4. The Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA)

The TCPA (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code ch. 27) is Texas’s anti‑SLAPP statute. Its objectives are:

• to protect citizens’ rights of free speech, petition, and association; and
• to quickly dismiss lawsuits filed primarily to chill participation in public affairs.

The TCPA establishes a multi‑step analysis:

1. The movant must show the legal action is based on, relates to, or is in response to the movant’s exercise of protected rights.
2. If so, the burden shifts to the non‑movant to establish “by clear and specific evidence a prima facie case for each essential element” of its claim.
3. Even if the non‑movant meets this burden, the movant can still obtain dismissal by establishing each essential element of a valid defense.
4. A prevailing movant is entitled to mandatory attorney’s fees, costs, and potentially sanctions under § 27.009.

This case underscores that the TCPA does not override jurisdictional requirements: unless the court has subject‑matter jurisdiction, it cannot adjudicate the TCPA steps at all.

5. Interlocutory Appeals

An interlocutory appeal is an appeal taken before final judgment, authorized only in specific circumstances that the legislature or rules have carved out. Under § 51.014(a)(12), a party may take an interlocutory appeal from an order denying a TCPA motion to dismiss.

The key point here is that once an interlocutory appeal is properly filed, the appellate court:

• has jurisdiction to consider that appeal; and
• must resolve any subject‑matter jurisdiction questions affecting the underlying case before considering the appeal’s merits, even if the jurisdictional ruling itself is not independently appealable.

6. Mootness vs. Lack of Standing

Mootness occurs when a case that was once live ceases to present a justiciable controversy—for example, because events have resolved the dispute or the challenged conduct can no longer cause harm. When a case becomes moot:

• the court loses subject‑matter jurisdiction from that point forward; but
• jurisdiction existed previously, so actions taken earlier (like granting a TCPA motion) were valid.

By contrast, lack of standing from the outset means the court never had jurisdiction at any time. Any purported merits rulings are void and must be vacated.

This distinction is why Harper (mootness after TCPA success) does not apply where standing never existed (no jurisdiction to ever decide the TCPA).

7. Ecclesiastical Abstention

Though not central to the abortion‑related facts, the Court’s reliance on Guerrero invokes the ecclesiastical‑abstention doctrine, under which civil courts lack jurisdiction over certain internal church disputes involving matters of doctrine, faith, or internal governance. The doctrine is another example of a jurisdictional bar that can render TCPA questions moot, reinforcing the general rule: no jurisdiction, no merits (including no TCPA).

V. Conclusion

The Texas Supreme Court’s per curiam opinion in Texas Right to Life v. Van Stean establishes and clarifies a vital procedural rule:

In any case, including interlocutory TCPA appeals, courts must resolve constitutional standing and all jurisdictional questions before addressing TCPA applicability or any other merits issue. A TCPA motion cannot operate, nor can TCPA fees and sanctions be awarded, where subject‑matter jurisdiction is absent from the outset.

By reversing the Third Court of Appeals for skipping over standing and instructing that a no‑standing finding requires vacatur and dismissal without remand, the Court:

• reaffirms the primacy of jurisdiction in Texas civil procedure;
• sharply distinguishes constitutional standing from statutory cause‑of‑action questions often mislabeled as “standing”;
• clarifies that TCPA structure cannot be used to invert jurisdictional sequencing; and
• protects the judiciary from being drawn into advisory opinions, particularly in politically charged contexts such as abortion litigation.

Whatever the ultimate fate of SB8‑related pre‑enforcement suits against private actors like TRTL, this opinion’s legacy will extend far beyond abortion law. It cements a “standing first, TCPA second” rule that will shape how Texas courts and practitioners approach jurisdiction, anti‑SLAPP motions, and interlocutory appeals in a wide array of civil disputes.