TCPA applies, but …

Steinhagen v. MC Trilogy Texas LLC makes two key points about the Texas Citizens Participation Act: first,  that commentary alleging municipal corruption in publicly accessible YouTube broadcasts addresses matters of public concern and thus triggers the TCPA framework; second, that the discovery rule does not extend limitations for defamation or business disparagement arising from such public posts.

On the limitations issue, the Court emphasized that reputational injuries from mass‑media publications are not “inherently undiscoverable,” analogizing YouTube dissemination to newspapers or television for accrual purposes.

As for another stream, the Court held the plaintiff failed to make a prima facie showing because the statement that a “public record” had “disappeared” did not specifically refer to the plaintiff, and the remainder—predicting that speaking to authorities would put one’s “life … in jeopardy”—was a nonactionable opinion about future events, not a verifiable fact. No. 05-24-00325-CV; Dec. 29, 2025. Notably, this is a fairly uncommon “opinion” from the Fifth Court, rather than a “memorandum opinion.”