Texas Supreme Court ends lawsuits against power generators over 2021 winter storm

On Friday in Austin, the Texas Supreme Court ended five separate appeals from tens of thousands of Texans and small businesses who had sued power generators over outages during the February 2021 winter storm, the court announced.

The court provided no written explanation for its decision. The freeze pushed temperatures into the single digits for days, left many customers without power and water, and is blamed for more than 240 deaths and economic losses that some estimates placed at over $300 billion, according to public reports.

The rulings are a clear legal victory for utilities sued in the wake of the storm, including regional companies CenterPoint Energy and NRG Texas Power, which argued the record-setting cold — not operational failures — caused the widespread damage and outages.

Advocates reacted with concern. Sandie Haverlah, president of the Texas Consumer Association, said the state Legislature’s subsequent push to harden generation infrastructure reflects an expectation of more extreme weather and an implicit acknowledgement of provider responsibility. “If the Legislature thought this was a one-time thing, they wouldn’t have done anything,” Haverlah said.

Four of the court’s nine justices did not participate in Friday’s decision, the court’s website shows. The appeals had sought to overturn a First Court of Appeals ruling that dismissed the suits as having “no basis in law or fact.”

This follows a separate 2023 high-court decision that found the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) was shielded by sovereign immunity. For now, the five appeals have been closed and plaintiffs have lost this avenue of legal recourse; the court gave no further details and did not indicate additional review.