What does a single trolley car lumbering down Main Street in 1907 have in common with a high speed rail travelling at 205 mph between Dallas and Houston 115 years later? When it comes to eminent domain rights in Texas, quite a bit.

James Miles owns a 600 acre tract of land in Leon County. The property has been in his family for nearly 100 years. In 2015, Texas Central Railroad & Infrastructure, Inc. and Integrated Texas Logistics, Inc. (collectively, “Texas Central”) requested permission to survey Miles’ property for purposes of obtaining a 100-foot right of way for a high-speed train between Dallas and Houston. The right of way would bisect the property and the railroad tracks would be elevated from the surrounding terrain by either an embankment or a viaduct.

Miles sued Texas Central, seeking a declaration that Texas Central’s consent form exceeded the survey activities granted by the Texas Legislature and seeking to negate Texas Central’s eminent domain rights. At the Supreme Court level, the Texas Attorney General filed a friend of the court brief in favor of Miles. On June 24, 2022, the Texas Supreme Court in Miles v. Texas Central Railroad held that Texas Central has eminent domain rights as an “interurban electric railway company”.

Interurban railways thrived from the early 1900s until the mid-1930s, at which time automobiles supplanted them as the preferred means of transportation between urban areas. Interurbans were usually single passenger rails cars travelling at street level with rails embedded in the pavement, akin to urban trolley systems. They were intended to stop frequently and “virtually anywhere”. In 1907, The Texas Legislature recognizing the importance of interurbans, promulgated a statute that allowed “a corporation…operating lines of electric railway between municipalities in this state for the transportation of…passengers” to enter on a person’s land for purposes of making a survey and to exercise eminent domain rights for route.

The Supreme Court grappled with two concepts that compete with priority in current day Texas: Property rights and maintaining a business-friendly climate. Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General, argued that property rights should trump Texas Central’s statutory rights. Texas Central, in contrast, argued that the 1907 statute survived recodification and should be given full effect. Ultimately, a majority of Justices found that the statute gave Texas Central survey and eminent domain rights.

Although a myriad of important interests were at stake in the Miles decision, one of the primary disputes was whether statutes should be interpreted to “embrace later-developed technologies” or whether they should be “interpreted according to their ordinary meaning when the statute was enacted”. The majority of Justices embraced the former, likening its interpretation in 1900 of statutes that referenced “telegraphs” to also encompass telephones. The dissent, illustrating the contrast between interurbans and modern high speed rail systems, took a more originalist approach and would have held the statute inapplicable to Texas Central.

As noted by the three dissenting Justices in the Miles case, a high speed is definitely not an interurban. The proposed high speed rail would travel between Dallas and Houston, not stop “virtually everywhere” or really anywhere except major urban hubs, would travel at 205 mph on trainsets that are 672 feet long and can carry 400 passengers. The high speed rail is intended to be elevated above adjoining property and would use an overhead catenary electric system as the source of propulsion.

The conflict between property rights and private business condemnation rights as well as whether statutes embrace new technologies or are to be interpreted in their original context will not end with the Miles decision. We can expect the Texas Legislature to take up bills circumscribing the impact of the 1907 statute and the Miles decision when it reconvenes in 2023. We can also expect the Court to revisit the application of originalism in interpreting statutory and constitutional rights in other cases, much like the United States Supreme Court has recently done.

If you should have any questions regarding property rights in Texas, please contact the attorneys in our Austin or Dallas offices at info@gstexlaw.com.

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