Gantt V. Harris County: How Death Does Not Dismiss A TCHRA Case Under The Texas Survivorship Statute

• Jurisdiction: Texas,United States
• Law Firm: Dickinson Wright PLLC
• Subject Matter: Employment and HR, Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration, Discrimination, Disability & Sexual Harassment, Trials & Appeals & Compensation, Personal Injury
• Author: Mr Adrian Acosta
• Published date: 03 March 2023

The Texas Commission on Human Rights Act ("TCHRA") was enacted to "provide for the execution of the policies of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its subsequent amendments." Tex. Lab. Code ' 21.001. Accordingly, it is rare for an issue of first impression to arise in the Texas courts. However, in Gantt v. Harris Cnty., the First District for the Houston Court of Appeals analyzed for the first time whether an employee's discrimination action fell within the Texas Survival Statute and thus survived the employee's death. [1] Accordingly, this post examines the relationship between the TCHRA and the Texas survivor statute and how other states have applied similar laws.

In Gantt, the employee'Amier Gantt'was terminated from his job at Harris County. Gantt filed suit against Harris County in August 2017, alleging claims of race discrimination and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Eventually, the claims were narrowed in August 2018 to race discrimination.

However, in September 2018, Gantt died, and Gantt's wife became the administrator of Gantt's estate. In January 2019, Harris County argued that the TCHRA claim did not survive Gantt because there was "no right of survivorship" under the Texas Labor Code for discrimination claims. The trial court granted the motion and dismissed the case, and the Estate appealed.

At the outset of the Court of Appeals' analysis, it noted that "whether a plaintiff's cause of action under the TCHRA survives [a claimant's] death" is a matter of first impression. The court noted that the TCHRA does not specify if causes of action survive death and that the Texas general survival statute applies to "personal injury." Tex. Civ. & Prac. Rem. Code ' 71.021, which provides:

1. A cause of action for personal injury to the health reputation, or person of an injured person does not abate because of the death of the injured person or because of the death of a person liable for the injury.
2. A personal injury action survives to and in favor of the heirs legal representatives, and estate of the injured person. The action survives against the liable person and the person's legal representatives.
3. The suit may be instituted and prosecuted as if the liable person were alive.Notably, the survival statute did not create a new cause of action, it merely permitted the injured decedent's cause of action to survive death.

Harris County argued that the survival statute did not apply to TCHRA because the survival statute was limited...