Justice, Fifteenth Court of Appeals, Place 2
The Fifteenth Court of Appeals is new and it is statewide. Its own page (www.txcourts.gov/15thcoa) records that "The legislature created the Fifteenth Court of Appeals during its 88th Session in 2023", that it has "statewide civil intermediate appellate jurisdiction", and that it holds "exclusive intermediate appellate jurisdiction over matters arising out of or related to a civil appeals brought by or against the state or a board, commission, department, office, or other agency in the executive branch of the state government" as well as "exclusive jurisdiction over appeals from the Texas Business Courts". It began work on 2024-09-01 with three members, and the Texas Tribune’s guide to these races (www.texastribune.org/2026/10/02/texas-15th-court-of-appeals-2026-elections-guide) records that "All three of the court’s current members are Republicans who were appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott in 2024"; this is the first election for every seat on it. Why this Court is on a cannabis voter guide. Because every civil suit against a Texas state agency now goes through it, the live hemp litigation does too. The State’s interlocutory appeal from the Travis County temporary injunction against the health department’s consumable-hemp rules — Texas Hemp Business Council v. Texas Department of State Health Services, Cause No. D-1-GN-26-002511 — is No. 15-26-00099-CV in this court, the case number this site’s own Texas law record already cites, and the rules are being enforced while it is pending. ⚠️That is a fact about the Court, not a prediction about any candidate. This site does not know and does not say how any person here would rule, and Canon 5 is the reason none of them may say either. ⚠️And the docket itself was not read: the judiciary’s case search at search.txcourts.gov asks automated tools not to read it, so the filings and the argument setting are reported here only as far as sources that do permit us carry them. A hemp ruling is reported of a candidate here, and it is reported rather than read. The Texas Tribune’s guide to this court (www.texastribune.org/2026/10/02/texas-15th-court-of-appeals-2026-elections-guide), published 2026-10-02, writes of Tom Baker that he "upheld an injunction blocking a ban on the sale of consumable hemp products in Texas in 2023." He sat on the Third Court of Appeals from 2019 to 2024, and in 2023 that court affirmed the Travis County injunction against the health department’s delta-8 schedules — the judgment the Supreme Court of Texas reversed in part on 2026-05-01 in No. 23-0887. ⚠️But this site has not read that opinion and cannot confirm he sat on the panel. The Third Court’s opinion in No. 03-21-00571-CV is indexed at search.txcourts.gov, which asks automated tools not to read it, and no host that permits us served the text. So what is published here is a dated newspaper statement about a named person, attributed to the newspaper, and not a panel line read off a judgment. If the two are the same case this candidate’s court was reversed in part; that is not established here. This Court has already decided cannabis cases, and this is exactly how much of them this site could read. The Supreme Court of Texas’s own order lists, read in full on 2026-10-16, record decisions of this court in the State’s suits against San Marcos, Austin and Elgin, which this site’s local-law record identifies as the suits over those cities’ voter-approved marijuana ordinances: No. 15-24-00084-CV (San Marcos), decided 2025-04-17 and reported at 714 S.W.3d 224, review denied 2025-09-12 (www.txcourts.gov/media/1461266/supreme-court-of-texas-orders-09-12-2025.pdf); No. 15-24-00077-CV (Austin), decided 2025-04-24 and reported at 714 S.W.3d 247, review denied 2025-12-19 (www.txcourts.gov/media/1461782/supreme-court-of-texas-orders-12-19-2025.pdf); and No. 15-24-00082-CV (Elgin), decided 2025-09-16, in which the Supreme Court on 2026-09-18 "vacates the judgment of the court of appeals and dismisses the case as moot" but "denies the Petitioner's request to vacate the court of appeals' opinion" (www.txcourts.gov/media/1463341/supreme-court-of-texas-orders-09-18-2026.pdf). Denying review is not a decision on the merits. ⚠️Which justices sat on those Appeals, and who wrote for the Court, is not established in this note. This court’s opinions are served by the judiciary at search.txcourts.gov, which asks automated tools not to read it; the Supreme Court’s order lists name the court and the case but not the panel; and law.justia.com, which permits automated readers on that path in its robots.txt, answered our request on 2026-10-16 with HTTP 403, which this site records and does not work around. So no opinion of this court is attributed here to any candidate, in either direction. ⚠️And none of it is a prediction: the hemp-rules appeal described above is a different case on a different question. What the Supreme Court’s own record does fix about the 2023 hemp case. Its order list for 2026-05-01 shows No. 23-0887 as coming from the Third Court of Appeals’ No. 03-21-00571-CV, decided 2023-09-28 and reported at 711 S.W.3d 227 (www.txcourts.gov/media/1462650/supreme-court-of-texas-orders-05-01-2026.pdf), and its opinion (www.txcourts.gov/media/1462654/230887.pdf) describes what that court did: "The court held that the vendors have standing; the trial court did not err in denying the plea to the jurisdiction as to the vendors' ultra vires and APA claims; and the trial court did not abuse its discretion in granting a temporary injunction." Neither document names the Third Court justices who decided it. Scott K. Field also served on the Third Court of Appeals, by the Texas Tribune’s account cited on his card, so the same limit applies to both people in this race: no part of that judgment is attributed to either of them. The candidates’ silence here is required, not evasive. The Texas Code of Judicial Conduct, Canon 5(1)(i), says a judge or judicial candidate shall not "make pledges or promises of conduct in office regarding pending or impending cases, specific classes of cases, specific classes of litigants, or specific propositions of law that would suggest to a reasonable person that the judge is predisposed to a probable decision". Hemp and cannabis cases are exactly such a class of cases before this court, so this site does not read a judicial candidate’s silence the way it reads a legislator’s, and it does not send these candidates a questionnaire. (Texas Code of Judicial Conduct: www.txcourts.gov/media/1462935/texas-state-code-of-judicial-conduct.pdf)
No record compiled yet. Nothing on cannabis — no vote, bill, statement or endorsement — was found in any source we could read. 4 limits on that search are recorded with it.
What was checked for Scott K. Field, and the limits on it
Checked on 2026-10-12: confirmed as a certified candidate in the Secretary of State’s final ballot certification of 28 August 2026, which is where the name and party on this card come from.
⚠️What could not be read, and is therefore not claimed here. The Texas judiciary’s own opinion and docket search at search.txcourts.gov asks automated tools not to read it, and this site did not read it, so no claim is made about the full body of this candidate’s written opinions. Ballotpedia permits us in its robots.txt but served no page content to any request on 2026-10-12, so NO Ballotpedia profile was read for this candidate and none is cited.
⚠️And this card does not tell you whether this candidate held a seat in an earlier Legislature, but the question is now narrower. Read on 2026-10-15, from each chamber’s own journal: the roll of members-elect that the Texas House Journal prints, district by district, on the first day of every regular session from the 75th Legislature (1997) through the 89th (2025), and every senator the Texas Senate Journal names with a district on the first day of every regular session from the 76th (1999) through the 89th.
For the 89th those are journals.house.texas.gov/hjrnl/89r/pdf/89RDAY01FINAL.PDF and journals.senate.texas.gov/SJRNL/89R/HTML/89RSJ01-14-F.HTM and every journal read is listed on this site’s corrections page. No one by this candidate’s name appears in any of them. That is narrower than a negative answer. Those rolls name the members seated as each session opened, and in most years the Senate’s names the senators who were not up for election by surname alone, so a member who sat only in earlier sessions, who arrived at a special election and was never named in full on a later first day, or who served under another name would not be found this way.
If this candidate is one of those, there may be a cannabis voting record this site is missing.
⚠️"NO RECORD" on this card means no campaign statement and no opinion of his that this site has read. He sits on the court hearing the hemp-rules appeal described in the race note above, which is a fact about the court and not a record of his. His opinions, on this court and on the Third Court of Appeals, are indexed only at search.txcourts.gov, which asks automated tools not to read it, so this site has read none of them.
⚠️Whether this candidate has a campaign site of their own is an open question here, and not a negative answer. This guide has not found one. It no longer claims to have looked in a way that could settle it, because the method this card used to cite was put to a case it was known to have passed and came back just as empty there. So if this candidate publishes a platform of their own, this guide may simply not have reached it, and the absence of a cannabis position below is weaker evidence than it looks.
This card has been corrected. What an earlier version of it said, and what was wrong with it, is published in the corrections log.
No score: this candidate has no recorded vote or bill authorship on a cannabis measure. Silence is not a position, so nothing is inferred from it.
Campaign sites and voter guides checked for Scott K. Field
Pages read in full:
- www.txcourts.gov/15thcoa/about-the-court — sections on the page: The Fifteenth Court of Appeals’s own page naming its three members and their places, read in full by us on 2026-10-12. It lists Justice Scott Field at Place 2 of the Fifteenth Court of Appeals. The page carries no occurrence, on a word boundary, of cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, THC, CBD, delta-8, delta-9, cannabinoid, dispensary or Compassionate Use.
- www.texastribune.org/2026/10/02/texas-15th-court-of-appeals-2026-elections-guide — sections on the page: The Texas Tribune’s 2026 general-election guide to this court, by Paul Cobler and María Méndez, published 2026-10-02 and read in full by us on 2026-10-12. It names him as the Republican candidate for Place 2 and as the sitting justice, previously of the Third Court of Appeals. No sentence about him in it contains, on a word boundary, cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, THC, CBD, delta-8, delta-9, cannabinoid, dispensary or Compassionate Use.
No record compiled yet. Nothing on cannabis — no vote, bill, statement or endorsement — was found in any source we could read. 4 limits on that search are recorded with it.
What was checked for Tom Baker, and the limits on it
Checked on 2026-10-12: confirmed as a certified candidate in the Secretary of State’s final ballot certification of 28 August 2026, which is where the name and party on this card come from.
⚠️What could not be read, and is therefore not claimed here. The Texas judiciary’s own opinion and docket search at search.txcourts.gov asks automated tools not to read it, and this site did not read it, so no claim is made about the full body of this candidate’s written opinions. Ballotpedia permits us in its robots.txt but served no page content to any request on 2026-10-12, so NO Ballotpedia profile was read for this candidate and none is cited.
⚠️And this card does not tell you whether this candidate held a seat in an earlier Legislature, but the question is now narrower. Read on 2026-10-15, from each chamber’s own journal: the roll of members-elect that the Texas House Journal prints, district by district, on the first day of every regular session from the 75th Legislature (1997) through the 89th (2025), and every senator the Texas Senate Journal names with a district on the first day of every regular session from the 76th (1999) through the 89th.
For the 89th those are journals.house.texas.gov/hjrnl/89r/pdf/89RDAY01FINAL.PDF and journals.senate.texas.gov/SJRNL/89R/HTML/89RSJ01-14-F.HTM and every journal read is listed on this site’s corrections page. No one by this candidate’s name appears in any of them. That is narrower than a negative answer. Those rolls name the members seated as each session opened, and in most years the Senate’s names the senators who were not up for election by surname alone, so a member who sat only in earlier sessions, who arrived at a special election and was never named in full on a later first day, or who served under another name would not be found this way.
If this candidate is one of those, there may be a cannabis voting record this site is missing.
⚠️"NO RECORD" on this card means no campaign statement and no judgment this site has read. A 2023 hemp ruling is reported of him by the Texas Tribune and is set out, with its limits, in the race note above this card. It is not recorded as an act of his here because the opinion itself could not be read on any host that permits us, and a panel membership is exactly the kind of fact a summary gets wrong.
⚠️Whether this candidate has a campaign site of their own is an open question here, and not a negative answer. This guide has not found one. It no longer claims to have looked in a way that could settle it, because the method this card used to cite was put to a case it was known to have passed and came back just as empty there. So if this candidate publishes a platform of their own, this guide may simply not have reached it, and the absence of a cannabis position below is weaker evidence than it looks.
This card has been corrected. What an earlier version of it said, and what was wrong with it, is published in the corrections log.
No score: this candidate has no recorded vote or bill authorship on a cannabis measure. Silence is not a position, so nothing is inferred from it.
Campaign sites and voter guides checked for Tom Baker
Pages read in full:
- www.texastribune.org/2026/10/02/texas-15th-court-of-appeals-2026-elections-guide — sections on the page: The Texas Tribune’s 2026 general-election guide to this court, by Paul Cobler and María Méndez, published 2026-10-02 and read in full by us on 2026-10-12. It names him as the Democratic candidate for Place 2 and as a justice of the Third Court of Appeals from 2019 to 2024, and it is the source of the hemp sentence quoted in the race note above this card.
All 2 candidates on this ballot are listed.