Tag: state bar of texas

Training, Legislative Updates, and a New Tobacco Awareness Program

This edition of Updates includes lots of training opportunities, including registration information for TJCTC’s upcoming Justice of the Peace Evictions Workshop this fall and a great series of webinars from the Texas State Bar about legislative updates. 

Don’t forget to read all the way to the bottom to see this week’s Legal Question of the Week and get access to a new, improved E-Cigarette and Tobacco Awareness Program for your courts!

HB 1306 Benefits for JPs

House Bill 1306 amended several code sections to add Death Investigation Professionals (JPs, Medical Examiners, and death investigators) to the list of people who can receive benefits if exposed to contagious diseases.

In addition, the same Death Investigation Professionals were added to code provisions providing medical, survivor, and Worker’s Compensation benefits if they arise from injury or death while executing their duties. 

Click the button below to review the bill.

Important E-Cigarette and Tobacco Awareness Program Update

Recently, the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) partnered with the Texas School Safety Center at Texas State University to develop and release a new, free, online, self-paced E-Cigarette and Tobacco Awareness Program (ETAP) course.

This program replaces the former Texas Youth Tobacco Awareness Program (TYTAP). 

This new program (ETAP) is the only Texas Department of State Health Services-approved e-cigarette and tobacco awareness program to meet the requirements of Health and Safety Code Section 161.253.

ETAP offers (2) separate online tracks that are available statewide and at no cost to users. Those courses include:

ETAP Referral Course: This course is intended for individuals under age 21 who are cited for possession of tobacco products, including e-cigarettes (vapes), and are referred by the courts or their school. It also provides young Texans with the information and skills necessary to quit and avoid tobacco products in the future. Schools and educators are also encouraged to use the ETAP Referral Course as an alternative to school suspension or Disciplinary Alternative Education Program.

ETAP Prevention Course: This course is designed for young Texans in grades 6-12 who are interested in learning about the harmful health effects of e-cigarettes and other tobacco products, tobacco industry marketing to young people, and how young people can build a vape free, tobacco free culture in their school. Schools and educators are encouraged to promote the ETAP Prevention Course as a way for students to receive awareness education regarding the harmful effects of tobacco use and vaping.

For questions about the course specifically, please reach out to tobacco.free@dshs.texas.gov.

FY2026 Registration 

Did you know that registration has already started for (some) FY26 Academic Year Conferences and Workshops??

Registration will open at 8:00 am (Please don’t wake up at midnight…you will be disappointed!) on the following dates:

Justices of the Peace – Open Now!!! Some programs are already full.

Court Personnel – Open Now!!! Programs are full, but some waitlists are open.

Constables & Deputies – October 21, 2025

*Note: Only court personnel notified by TJCTC are eligible for early registration. This registration is for court personnel who were unable to attend a conference last year. If anyone who is not eligible registers, they will be removed from the registration list and may not get a slot during regular registration.

Click the buttons below to see the agendas, dates, and locations of programs.

Highlight on Evictions & Landlord/Tenant Issues

All conferences this year will feature sessions about evictions and landlord/tenant issues and will be updated with all of the new legislative changes.

There will also be special programming exclusively on these topics. One example is the workshop for justices of the peace:

Justice of the Peace Virtual Evictions Workshop – November 12 – 14, 2025 via Zoom

Legal Question of the Week

Question: If a defendant e-files an inability to pay appeal affidavit, say, on a Thursday, and for various reasons – efile could be down, computer system crashed, etc. – and the court doesn’t get to it until the following Monday, what would be the guiding state in regards to payment into the court registry, the day the party filed it, or the day the court entered it into the case?

Either day would be timely in regards to the appeal, but I want to make sure that when we send the information back to the filer about their registry payment that they have the appropriate time to pay into the registry and not cut them short, but I also want to make sure that we are within the proper time parameters according to the law. Please advise.

Answer: Generally, a document is considered filed when it is submitted through the efile system. In a case like this, when that happens could depend on when the efile system registers it submitted – this would usually be when the filer hit the submit button. If the system was down, it would likely not accept the filing. If there is another issue like the courts computers being down, there is no specific rule or statute allowing the extension of the deadline to pay rent into the registry, other than the general Rule 500.5(c) that allows the court to extend any time period under the Rules except those relating to new trial and appeal for good cause. We believe that the court could consider the issues that you describe to be good cause to extend this deadline. 

The notice for the defendant to pay rent into the registry is required to give the defendant 5 days from the filing of the appeal bond or statement of inability to pay. This means, in this case they would have 5 days from whenever the statement of inability to pay court costs was submitted through efile. In these cases, it is important that the clerk accept these cases and send this notice as soon as possible. 

It may be worth contacting the efile provider to see if there is a possibility of an automatic notice going out upon submission of an appeal in a non-payment of rent eviction case. Note, this might be even more helpful, if it is possible, when the new eviction laws go into effect in January 2026. The requirement of payment of rent into the registry will be extended to all types of eviction cases, not just non-payment. See Legislative Update Materials at https://www.tjctc.org/legislative.html.