The district court ruled on the case after it was remanded by the U.S. Supreme Court, which found that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had correctly reversed the trial court’s initial decision granting summary judgment to the defendants.  In agreeing with the Fifth Circuit, the Supreme Court ruled that interest earned on client funds held in IOLTA accounts is a property interest within the Fifth Amendment’s reach and instructed the district court to determine whether or not IOLTA funds were "taken" by Texas and the amount of compensation, if any, owed to plaintiffs.

Finding unpersuasive the plaintiffs’ arguments that the IOLTA program imposes an unfair burden they had no role in creating, the district court ruled that "a taking has not occurred" and that plaintiffs "are in fact bearing no burden at all."  Further, the court noted that but for the IOLTA program, the interest income at issue in the case would not even exist, since the costs associated with maintaining funds in non-IOLTA accounts would exceed the interest income such accounts would generate.

Plaintiffs in the case were led by the Washington Legal Foundation, a conservative public interest law center, while the Texas Equal Access to Justice Foundation, the agency that oversees and implements Texas’s IOLTA program, headed up the list of defendants.