A Bryan County judge has shut down an Oklahoma landowner's attempt to rope the State of Texas into a boundary fight along the Red River, tossing Texas from the case and blocking the plaintiff from chasing the state in that Oklahoma courtroom. District Judge Mark R. Campbell signed the order last Sunday, following a Feb. 17 hearing in Bryan County.
The complaint sought a quiet‑title ruling tied to alleged shifts in the riverbank that the plaintiff claimed had nudged the boundary north and pulled Texas land into Oklahoma. With Texas now out, any remaining title disputes among the private landowners listed in the complaint can keep moving forward on their own track, separate from the state's immunity defense.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office said it helped secure the dismissal and argued Oklahoma courts never had jurisdiction to hear a suit against the state in the first place. In a press release via the Office of the Attorney General, Paxton warned, "The full force of the law will come crashing down on anyone trying to seize Texas land." The agency said it coordinated with the Texas Department of Transportation and outside counsel to move to dismiss Texas's involvement.
The Bryan County court order signed by Judge Campbell states flatly that "This Court has no jurisdiction over the State of Texas, or any of its entities." The order, filed in the Bryan County District Court, removes the State of Texas from the list of defendants following the February hearing. The public document lists the case as CV‑25‑81, with plaintiff Craig Hilliard and several Texas landowners named as defendants; see the Bryan County court order for the full filing.
How the boundary is defined
The plaintiff's theory leaned on a 1923 U.S. Supreme Court decision that described the Texas‑Oklahoma boundary in terms of the river's lower bank. Later, Texas and Oklahoma negotiated the Red River Boundary Compact, which fixes the political boundary at the vegetation line along the south bank instead of a shifting lower bank.
For the legal backdrop, see the 1923 U.S. Supreme Court decision and the compact as codified in the Red River Boundary Compact in the Texas Natural Resources Code.
What the ruling does and doesn't
By dismissing Texas from the case, Judge Campbell blocked the plaintiff from using an Oklahoma state court to adjudicate sovereign‑held property. The order does not settle who owns the disputed riverbank parcels between private landowners.
The ruling turns on jurisdiction and sovereign‑immunity principles rather than a final title determination, which means the private quiet‑title claims named in the original complaint could still proceed in the appropriate forums. Any future filings are likely to drill into where particular parcels fall under the compact's vegetation‑line standard and traditional doctrines like accretion and avulsion.
Legal takeaway
The core obstacle here is sovereign immunity: a state generally cannot be sued in another state's courts without its consent, and Judge Campbell concluded Oklahoma lacked authority to adjudicate Texas's title. The Red River Boundary Compact expressly recognizes accretion, erosion, and avulsion and adopts a vegetation‑line rule aimed at cutting down on repeat boundary litigation. Those provisions appear in the Texas Natural Resources Code and set the legal stage for river‑line fights like this one.
Paxton said his office will keep defending Texas property rights and sovereignty, calling the order a rebuke to "erroneous theories" that would unsettle state land ownership, per the Office of the Attorney General. For now, Texas is out of the case in Bryan County, while any private disputes continue between landowners and their lawyers; watch the public filings in CV‑25‑81 for the next moves.
