Jimmy Blacklock

Candidate interview. Wise County Conservatives YouTube. 6 Dec 2025. 4:25 min.

Candidate interivew. Texas Young Lawyers Association Young Gunners Podcast. 7 May 2025. 38:15 min. 

In State of Texas v. Loe (2024), Justice Blacklock concurred separately, in the Texas Supreme Court’s decision upholding Senate Bill 14, which prohibits puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone treatments, and certain surgeries for minors when provided to transition a child’s biological sex or affirm a gender inconsistent with that sex. He distinguished traditional parental authority over medical care from treatments he viewed as disrupting or destroying normal biological development and emphasized that the Legislature has constitutional authority to regulate the practice of medicine. Relying on the historical meaning of “medicine,” Blacklock argued that the Legislature could determine that treatments aimed at altering normal biological functioning are not genuine medical care and therefore fall outside traditional parental autonomy.

In Hensley v. State Commission on Judicial Conduct (2024), Justice Blacklock concurred separately in the Texas Supreme Court's decision allowing Justice Hensley’s claims against the Judicial Conduct Commission to proceed. Hensley had been warned for declining to officiate same-sex weddings because of her religious beliefs while referring couples to other officiants. Blacklock argued that the Commission exceeded its authority because Hensley’s respectful refusal did not violate the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct or demonstrate bias against gay people or an inability to judge their cases impartially. He maintained that Obergefell established a right to same-sex marriage but did not require a particular judge to officiate those marriages or authorize the Commission to punish a judge for a religiously motivated refusal. Blacklock would have resolved the merits immediately and held that the Commission violated Hensley’s legal and religious-freedom rights.

In In re State of Texas (2023), Justice Blacklock concurred in the per curiam order granting relief, in which the Texas Supreme Court considered whether a court could determine that an abortion qualified for the medical-emergency exception to Texas’s abortion laws. The Court held that the exception requires a physician, using “reasonable medical judgment,” to determine whether the statutory conditions are met; courts cannot substitute their own judgment or expand the exception beyond the Legislature’s text. Because the physician had not made the required determination, the Court held that the trial court erred in granting an order preventing enforcement of Texas’s abortion laws which prohibit abortions except in limited circumstances, and directed it to vacate that order. 

In Abbott v. Anti-Defamation League Austin (2020), Justice Blacklock concurred separately in the Texas Supreme Court’s per curiam decision upholding the Governor’s order limiting counties to one location for the early hand delivered mail-in ballots. Blacklock argued that the Governor’s order did not unlawfully burden the right to vote because voters still had multiple ways to cast their ballots, and the Constitution does not guarantee a particular method or number of locations for voting. He also emphasized that the Governor had authority under the Texas Disaster Act to modify his earlier expansion of mail-ballot delivery during the COVID-19 emergency. The Court reversed the lower court’s injunction blocking enforcement of the order.

In In re State of Texas (2020), Justice Blacklock joined the Court’s opinion addressing whether a voter’s lack of immunity to COVID-19 and concern about contracting the virus at a polling place constituted a “disability” under Texas law allowing the voter to vote by mail. The Texas Supreme Court held that a voter’s lack of immunity to COVID-19, by itself, did not qualify as a disability under the Texas Election Code. The Court concluded that whether a voter was eligible to vote by mail depended on the statutory definition of disability.