Keller Independent School District and Grapevine-Colleyville ISD are now part of a growing wave of Texas government bodies suing the state attorney general to keep certain records out of the public eye. At the center of the fight are unredacted legal invoices, the line-by-line fee details that parents and watchdog groups say should be basic public information. Instead of simple answers about who got paid for what, residents are watching districts and the state spend more public money battling over access in court.
Records Show A Statewide Backlog
According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, records from the Attorney General’s Office showed about 151 pending suits in Travis County as of June 12. Billing records reviewed by the paper put the state’s legal costs for defending those disputes at more than $150,000. The Star-Telegram reported that the list includes Tarrant County school districts that went back to the attorney general seeking to stop the release of documents the office had already ordered disclosed.
That mix of repeated challenges and slow-moving courts is exactly what has parents and transparency advocates worried. Routine spending questions are getting parked in Travis County court dockets instead of being answered with a stack of invoices.
What The Law Says About Fee Bills
Under the Texas Public Information Act, some categories of records are treated as presumptively public. That list includes “information that is in a bill for attorney’s fees,” unless another law makes it confidential. See Gov. Code §552.022(a)(16).
In written rulings on school district requests, the Office of the Attorney General has applied that rule to legal invoices and explained that districts may redact narrow portions that reflect privileged attorney-client communications or attorney work product. What they cannot do, the office has said, is withhold entire invoices simply by labeling them privileged. The agency has laid out that analysis in recent opinions such as OR2025-029660 and OR2025-030488.
Why Keller And Grapevine-Colleyville Pushed Back
Both Keller ISD and Grapevine-Colleyville ISD filed suit after the attorney general ruled that invoices tied to work by attorney Tim Davis had to be released, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Parents, including Rachel Wall, say they have been waiting years to see those billing details and argue that basics such as hours, rates and totals are not privileged legal advice…