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Over Reducing their Local Option Homestead Exemptions
Two ISDs Can’t Quite End Tax Suit They Lost
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The Texas Supreme Court (TSC) refused requests by the Dumas and White Deer ISDs to quickly end the remnants of their legal fight they lost over their decisions to reduce their local option homestead exemption (LOHE) during the summer of 2015.

The TSC let stand rulings (for Dumas and White Deer) by a three-judge Texas Seventh Court of Appeals (Amarillo) panel that sent — to the respective trial court judges for additional consideration — the issue of whether the property owners who sued the two ISDs are due partial tax refunds over their decisions to reduce their LOHEs.

The two ISDs unsuccessfully argued that the property owners waited to long to take the required legal steps to preserve their rights to a refund.

  • Note: Prior court decisions — including the primary litigation (ultimately dismissed by the TSC) involving Kilgore ISD’s repeal of its years-old LOHE — have firmly established that state Attorney General Ken Paxton was correct that ISDs could not legally repeal or reduce their LOHE in 2015 from their 2014 LOHE under terms of a school finance bill passed in 2015 (SB1), even if they did so before Texas voters passed an enabling constitutional amendment (2015’s SJR1) in November 2015.

    The LOHE freeze expired on Dec. 31, 2019.


The Texas Attorney General’s office intervened on behalf of property owners who sued their ISDs over the LOHE issue, but is not involved in the current litigation over claims for taxpayer refunds.