The Court again faced the question of whether a report that an employee makes internally within a government agency counts as a report to "law enforcement," and thus grants the employee protection from retaliation under the Texas Whistleblower Act.

This case was decided at the court of appeals level before the Court's decision in TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES v. OLIVER OKOLI, No. 10-0567. The Court concluded that the same holding should apply here, and that a report made to an official with merely internal oversight authority within the agency did not qualify. Instead, the report must be made to someone with the authority to enforce laws against the public.

The Supreme Court found the facts in this case indistinguishable from those in its recent decision in UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON v. SANDRA WILLIAMS AND STEVE WILLIAMS, No. 13-0338.

What makes this per curiam interesting is how the Court dealt with Williams being a plurality decision. Because only four Justices joined the "opinion of the court" in that case, its statements do not form a truly binding holding of the Court. So, to assemble a holding, the Court adds up the justices who agreed with the judgment, looking for a majority who shared a common holding.

Although not embracing the plurality’s analysis, Justice Boyd concurred with the opinion’s salient holding. Id. at 62 (Boyd, J., concurring). Thus, a majority of the Court agreed that under facts similar to those in this case, the recreational use statute does not apply.