All 10 judges serving on Texas Business Courts in Austin, San Antonio and other big cities have been reappointed by Gov. Greg Abbott to new two-year terms.
The courts, one of the few venues where substantial cases are overseen by judges who are not elected, handle commercial disputes with claims of $5 million or more. Founder fights, hostile takeover attempts, shareholder derivative cases and other complex litigation land in the specialized courts that are situated in the state’s major business hubs.
Abbott was an early champion of the business-savvy courts. In 2023, he signed House Bill 19 creating the new jurisdictions overseeing litigation he said other courts were failing to adjudicate fairly. When he swore in the judges to their first two-year terms in September 2024, Abbott said the move ended the days when business cases would be decided by judges with “no idea what goes on in the business world.”
He sees the system as part of a broader push to make Texas more business-friendly. In other states where they operate, business court systems have been associated with increases in the value of publicly traded companies, according to a study from the University of Texas.
Hundreds of cases have flowed into the Texas courts since they opened, although filings initially came slowly as lawyers waited for greater clarity about the courts’ jurisdiction and procedures. One result of the early trickle was that the first jury trials have just been completed this year in the 3rd Business Court Division that includes Austin, the 1st Business Court in Dallas and 11th Business Court in Houston. No cases filed in the 4th Business Court in San Antonio have gone to trial.
In 2025, the Legislature passed House Bill 40, expanding the courts’ jurisdiction and standardizing the monetary threshold to access them — reducing it from disputes involving $10 million to the current $5 million.
In Austin, the court has overseen cases ranging from disputes over the location of a tech company’s headquarters to gun ranges and psychedelic churches. In San Antonio, cases have included a dispute over control of a family’s business empire and one among title companies alleging their employees and confidential business information had been poached.
As he announced the judges’ reappointments, Abbott said they have delivered monumental success. Their second two-year terms begin Sept. 1.
Outside Austin and San Antonio, Abbott reappointed Andrea Bouressa and William Whitehill to the 1st Business Court Division in Dallas, Jerry Bullard and Brian Stagner to the 8th Business Court Division in Fort Worth and Sofia Adroqué and Grant Dorfman to the 11th Business Court Division in Houston.
Patrick Danner contributed to this report.