Background
In 2019, the Texas Legislature enacted House Bill 1899, adding Section 108.052 to the Texas Occupations Code. That provision mandates that licensing authorities automatically deny license applications for certain health care professionals—including master social workers—if the applicant has ever been convicted of a felony offense involving the use or threat of force. Tex. Occ. Code § 108.052(2). Unlike the prior individualized-determination process, which required the licensing authority to consider mitigating factors such as the age of the person at the time of the offense, elapsed time since the conviction, and evidence of rehabilitation, the 2019 amendment created an absolute categorical bar with no exceptions.
Plaintiffs Katherin Youniacutt and Tammy Thompson had each obtained master’s degrees in social work, passed their licensing exams, and otherwise satisfied all requirements for a master social worker license. Both had single assault convictions from the 2000s—roughly two decades earlier—when each was struggling with substance abuse. Youniacutt’s conviction arose from hitting a police officer with her car while fleeing a DUI stop; Thompson’s from beating a man with a baseball bat. Both had since overcome addiction and assembled strong letters of recommendation. Nevertheless, their applications were automatically denied under § 108.052(2). They sued the Board, the Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council, and agency officials, seeking declarations that the statute violated their rights to due course of law and equal protection under the Texas Constitution (Art. I, §§ 19, 3). The State filed a plea to the jurisdiction asserting sovereign immunity. The trial court denied the plea, finding the statute “irrational.” The State appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifteenth Court of Appeals reversed, rendered judgment granting the State’s plea to the jurisdiction, and dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims.
A defendant state agency’s sovereign immunity is waived only if the plaintiff’s constitutional claim is not “facially invalid.” Mex. Am. Legal Caucus v. Boerne, 647 S.W.3d 698 (Tex. 2022). On substantive due course of law, the court applied the two-prong test from Patel v. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, 469 S.W.3d 69 (Tex. 2015): a licensing statute is unconstitutional if either (1) its purpose is not arguably rationally related to a legitimate government interest, or (2) its real-world effect as applied is so burdensome as to be oppressive in light of the government interest. The court found § 108.052(2) passed both prongs. The Legislature’s stated purpose—protecting vulnerable patients from licensed health care professionals who have committed violent crimes—is rationally related to a legitimate interest. The legislative history expressly cited concerns about health care professionals using positions of authority to harm patients. And the real-world effect of disqualifying violent felons from licensure as social workers is not “burdensome” in the Patel sense: unlike the hundreds of hours of unrelated cosmetology training invalidated in Patel, refraining from committing violent felonies is a condition applied universally to all citizens, not a specialized burden on license-seekers. The fact that Youniacutt and Thompson may have passed the old individualized-determination process does not render the categorical ban irrational—the Legislature made a policy choice to eliminate individualized assessments, and courts may not second-guess that choice under rational-basis review.
On procedural due course of law, the court found no due-process violation; and on equal protection, the same rational-basis analysis applied. The court expressly declined to decide whether the plaintiffs had a cognizable liberty interest in obtaining a professional license (an unsettled question after Crown Distributing, 647 S.W.3d 648 (Tex. 2022)), because § 108.052(2) passed constitutional scrutiny even assuming such an interest exists.
Key Takeaways
- To survive a state agency’s plea to the jurisdiction on constitutional grounds, a plaintiff must plead a claim that is not “facially invalid”; a licensing statute need only satisfy rational-basis review to defeat a substantive due-course challenge under Patel’s two-prong test.
- Texas Occupations Code § 108.052(2)’s automatic denial of health-care professional licenses to applicants with prior violent felony convictions is constitutional—the Legislature’s stated goal of protecting vulnerable patients is a legitimate interest, and the categorical disqualification is not so burdensome as to be oppressive, unlike the irrelevant training requirements struck down in Patel.
- The court distinguished Patel on its facts: the license bar here applies only to those who have committed violent felonies, while the cosmetology requirements in Patel burdened all applicants regardless of their qualifications—a material difference in constitutional analysis.
Why It Matters
For Texas occupational licensing practitioners and regulated entities, Youniacutt confirms that the 2019 Legislature’s categorical violent-felony licensing bars survive facial constitutional challenge under both the due-course and equal-protection provisions of the Texas Constitution. Challengers cannot simply invoke Patel’s occupational-liberty framework; they must show either that the statute’s purpose lacks a rational legislative basis, or that its effect is oppressive in the manner of requiring hundreds of hours of irrelevant training. A background check based on violent-crime convictions does not meet that threshold.
For social workers, rehabilitation advocates, and their counsel, the opinion—while adverse on the merits—clarifies that the better avenue for relief lies in the Legislature, not the courts. Section 108.052(2) passed on its face; the Fifteenth Court expressly noted that policy disagreements with the categorical approach are for elected lawmakers to resolve. The opinion also leaves open the question (noted but not decided) of whether a liberty interest in professional licensure exists under Texas law post-Crown Distributing, preserving that issue for a future case.