Full Opinion

In the Court of Appeals Second Appellate District of Texas at Fort Worth ___________________________ No. 02-26-00335-CV ___________________________ SEAN OWENS, Appellant V. EDUCATIONAL CREDIT MANAGEMENT CORPORATION, Appellee On Appeal from the 236th District Court Tarrant County, Texas Trial Court No. 236-374336-26 Before Sudderth, C.J.; Kerr and Wallach, JJ. Memorandum Opinion by Justice Wallach MEMORANDUM OPINION This is an accelerated appeal pursuant to the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA). See Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §§ 27.001–.011; see also id. § 27.008(b); Bauta v. Mulvey, 646 S.W.3d 347, 351 (Tex. App.—Corpus Christi–Edinburg 2022, pet. denied) (acknowledging that appeal taken from an order granting a motion to dismiss under the TCPA was an accelerated appeal). Appellant Sean Owens, acting pro se, contends that the trial court erred by granting the omnibus motion filed by Appellee Educational Credit Management Corporation (ECMC) seeking his lawsuit’s dismissal under both the TCPA and Rule 91a of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure. Because we conclude that the TCPA applies and that Owens failed to establish a prima facie case for each of his claims’ essential elements by clear and specific evidence, we affirm the trial court’s judgment dismissing Owens’s lawsuit with prejudice.1 See Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 27.005(b), (c). I. BACKGROUND Between 2003 and 2006, Owens took out sixteen loans to finance his graduate education. Owens acknowledges that he borrowed these funds and admits that he has never repaid them. Although ECMC was not the original lender, it was a third-party guarantor servicer of Owens’s loans from 2018 to 2022. 1 Because we conclude that the trial court did not err by dismissing Owens’s claims pursuant to the TCPA, we need not address the dismissal of his claims under Rule 91a. See Tex. R. App. P. 47.1; Lingle v. Sage Architecture, Inc., No. 04-24-00633-CV, 2025 WL 2058073, at *1 (Tex. App.—San Antonio July 23, 2025, no pet.). 2 Despite his admission that he has never repaid his student loans, Owens claims that he was harmed by certain inaccuracies in the reporting of these loans to credit-reporting agencies. Specifically, he contends that in July 2019, a lender denied his mortgage-loan application because of purportedly inaccurate credit information reported by ECMC and another student-loan servicer. In September 2020, Owens filed a lawsuit against ECMC and other defendants in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (the Federal Lawsuit) in which he asserted several causes of action, including claims under the Fair Debt Reporting Act and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. ECMC has characterized the Federal Lawsuit—which has been pending for approximately six years and remains ongoing—as “extraordinarily contentious and protracted.”2 In December 2025, ECMC moved for summary judgment in the Federal Lawsuit. In its summary-judgment motion, ECMC argued that Owens’s claims were meritless because, among other things, it had properly investigated Owens’s credit-information dispute and had accurately reported that he was in default on his 2 According to ECMC, there have been more than 400 filings in the Federal Lawsuit, 140 of which—including four separate motions to recuse the presiding district court and magistrate judges, six motions for Rule 11 sanctions, and two state-bar grievances—are attributable to Owens. ECMC also notes that since Owens filed the Federal Lawsuit, he has twice filed nearly identical lawsuits in other jurisdictions: one in a Denton County state court and another in a California federal court. The Denton County case was ultimately removed and consolidated with the Federal Lawsuit, and the California case was transferred to the Eastern District of Texas, stayed, and administratively closed. 3 student loans. As summary-judgment evidence, ECMC submitted the affidavit of Diane Zitur, its Director of Compliance and Ombudsman. Attached to Zitur’s affidavit were certain records from the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS), a federal database containing information about student loans. Relying on this NSLDS data, Zitur’s affidavit traced the history of Owens’s student loans and provided evidentiary support for ECMC’s argument that its reporting of Owens’s default status had been appropriate. Owens filed a response to ECMC’s summary-judgment motion and also filed two separate motions for Rule 11 sanctions pertaining to the summary-judgment filing. In the second of these Rule 11 motions, Owens argued that ECMC had improperly accessed and used the NSLDS records to support its summary-judgment motion. In addition to these federal-court filings, Owens filed a petition commencing the instant lawsuit against ECMC in state court. The allegations in Owens’s state-court petition mirror those in his second federal-court Rule 11 motion—that ECMC improperly accessed and used his NSLDS records to support its summary- judgment motion in the Federal Lawsuit. Based on these allegations, Owens asserted a variety of state-law causes of action against ECMC, including intrusion upon seclusion, negligence, unlawful misuse of personal identifying information, and unjust enrichment. 4 ECMC filed an omnibus motion to dismiss Owens’s claims under both the TCPA and Rule 91a of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure. In that motion, ECMC argued, among other things, that Owens’s claims should have been dismissed under the TCPA because they were all based on or in response to ECMC’s exercise of the right to petition—specifically, its use of the NSLDS data as summary-judgment evidence in the Federal Lawsuit. Three days before the hearing on ECMC’s motion to dismiss, Owens filed an amended petition in which he removed certain claims, added others, and edited certain language in his allegations. In particular, he removed his unlawful-misuse-of-personal-identifying-information and unjust-enrichment claims and added claims for public disclosure of private facts, “breach of computer security,” and “proximate causation.” He also changed the statutory basis for his negligence per se claim. At the hearing on ECMC’s dismissal motion, the trial court asked Owens to explain the connection between the Federal Lawsuit and his state-court claims. Owens stated that ECMC had “accessed [his] records . . . for purposes in the [F]ederal [Lawsuit]” and confirmed that his state-court claims were based on his allegation that ECMC had “wrongfully access[ed] the NSLDS database” for “[l]itigation purposes,” namely, “to support a motion for summary judgment” in the Federal Lawsuit. Following the hearing, the trial court signed a judgment dismissing Owens’s claims under both the TCPA and Rule 91a and awarding ECMC $49,206.50 in 5 attorney’s fees plus interest, court costs, and future attorney’s fees incurred in executing the judgment.3 This appeal followed. II. DISCUSSION Owens raises eight appellate issues, six of which pertain to the trial court’s dismissal of his claims under the TCPA.4 In these six issues, Owens essentially advances three broad arguments: (1) that the trial court procedurally erred by dismissing his claims under the TCPA because ECMC did not amend or supplement 3 Owens conclusorily asserted in his opening brief’s “Introduction and Preface” that the trial court had “award[ed] mandatory attorney’s fees and sanctions under the TCPA without a shred of meaningful analysis” and that it had “abdicat[ed]” its judicial duty “[b]y rubber-stamping an opaque and unauthenticated invoice without reviewing billing descriptions or evaluating what constitutes a ‘reasonable and necessary’ fee under Texas law.” But he did not offer any citations to the record or to applicable authority to support this assertion, nor did he raise an appellate issue specifically challenging the trial court’s award of attorney’s fees. See Tex. R. App. P. 38.1(i). Due to his inadequate briefing, Owens has forfeited any purported complaint about the trial court’s award of attorney’s fees. See id.; Hicks Airfield Pilots Ass’n v. Brunson, No. 02-25-00177-CV, 2026 WL 1700499, at *17 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth June 11, 2026, no pet.) (“Merely uttering brief, conclusory statements unsupported by citation to legal authorities does not satisfy [the] briefing requirements.” (first citing Jimison v. MAEDC-Hulen Bend Senior Cmty., L.P., No. 02-23-00206-CV, 2024 WL 3282544, at *8 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth July 3, 2024, no pet.); and then citing Valadez v. Avitia, 238 S.W.3d 843, 845 (Tex. App.—El Paso 2007, no pet.))). Owens’s remaining two issues—his fifth and seventh—challenge the trial 4 court’s conclusion that his claims had no basis in law and were required to be dismissed under Rule 91a because they were premised on alleged violations of the federal Higher Education Act of 1965, a comprehensive regulatory scheme that confers no private right of action. See Tex. R. Civ. P. 91a; see also 20 U.S.C. §§ 1001– 1161aa-1. Because we conclude that the trial court did not err by dismissing Owens’s claims pursuant to the TCPA, we need not—and therefore do not—address his appellate issues pertaining to his claims’ dismissal under Rule 91a. See supra note 1. 6 its omnibus dismissal motion after he filed his amended petition; (2) that the trial court erred by concluding that the TCPA applies to his claims; and (3) that even if the TCPA applies, the trial court nevertheless erred by dismissing his claims because he established a prima facie case for each of his claims’ essential elements by clear and specific evidence. For the reasons set forth below, we reject each of these arguments. A. Standard of Review and Governing Law The TCPA—commonly referred to as Texas’s anti-SLAPP5 statute—is intended to “protect[] citizens who petition or speak on matters of public concern from retaliatory lawsuits that seek to intimidate or silence them.” In re Lipsky, 460 S.W.3d 579, 584 (Tex. 2015) (orig. proceeding); see Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 27.002 (summarizing TCPA’s purpose as “encourag[ing] and safeguard[ing] the constitutional rights of persons . . . and, at the same time, protect[ing] the rights of a person to file meritorious lawsuits for demonstrable injury”). A party who moves for dismissal under the TCPA invokes a three-step, burden-shifting process: (1) first, the movant seeking dismissal must demonstrate that a “legal action” has been brought against him and that the action is “based on or is in response to” an exercise of a protected constitutional right; (2) then the burden shifts to the party bringing the legal action to avoid dismissal by establishing, by clear and specific evidence, a prima facie case for each essential element of the claim in 5 SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. See Windsor v. Round, 591 S.W.3d 654, 658 (Tex. App.—Waco 2019, pet. denied). 7 question; and (3) finally, the burden shifts back to the movant to justify dismissal by establishing an affirmative defense or other ground on which he is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. See Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 27.005(b)–(d); Miller v. Schupp, No. 02-21-00107-CV, 2022 WL 60606, at *1 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth Jan. 6, 2022, no pet.). When reviewing a trial court’s determination as to whether the parties have satisfied their respective burdens, we consider “the pleadings, evidence a court could consider under Rule 166a, Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, and supporting and opposing affidavits stating the facts on which the liability or defense is based,” and we view all of these in a light most favorable to the nonmovant. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 27.006(a); see Maggret v. Ramsey’s Rods & Restoration, No. 02-20-00395-CV, 2021 WL 2253244, at *2 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth June 3, 2021, no pet.); Stallion Oilfield Servs., Ltd. v. Gravity Oilfield Servs., LLC, 592 S.W.3d 205, 214 (Tex. App.— Eastland 2019, pet. denied). We have previously recognized that courts are “statutorily required to consider all pleadings” when deciding whether a TCPA movant has met its initial burden to show that the TCPA applies. NexPoint Advisors, L.P. v. United Dev. Funding IV, 674 S.W.3d 437, 444 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2023, pet. denied) (emphasis added). Accordingly, we will consider both Owens’s superseded original petition and his amended petition in deciding whether ECMC satisfied its step-one burden. See 3D Ventures Cap., LLC v. Toscano, No. 04-24-00481-CV, 2025 WL 1949559, at *3 (Tex. App.—San Antonio July 16, 2025, no pet.) (holding that appellate courts should 8 consider not only a nonmovant’s amended petition but also his superseded original petition when deciding whether the TCPA movant has met its burden to show that the TCPA applies); see also Weller v. MonoCoque Diversified Ints., LLC, No. 03-19-00127-CV, 2020 WL 3582885, at *2–3 (Tex. App.—Austin July 1, 2020, no pet.) (considering factual allegations that were omitted from amended pleading in determining whether TCPA applied); Gaskamp v. WSP USA, Inc., 596 S.W.3d 457, 478–82 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2020, pet. dism’d) (en banc) (reviewing both superseded and live petitions to determine whether TCPA applied). We review a trial court’s ruling on a TCPA motion to dismiss de novo. Landry’s, Inc. v. Animal Legal Def. Fund, 631 S.W.3d 40, 45–46 (Tex. 2021); Hanna v. Williams, 681 S.W.3d 416, 422 (Tex. App.—Austin 2023, pets. denied) (op. on reh’g); Miller, 2022 WL 60606, at *1–2. B. Purported Procedural Error Before undertaking our TCPA analysis, we must first address Owens’s contention that the trial court procedurally erred by ruling on ECMC’s dismissal motion at all because ECMC never amended or supplemented its motion to address his amended petition. According to Owens, because ECMC did not amend or supplement its omnibus dismissal motion, it effectively “abandon[ed]” its TCPA challenge, and the trial court “dismissed claims that were not properly before it for adjudication” in violation of Owens’s due-process rights. We disagree. 9 ECMC was not required to amend its TCPA motion in response to Owens’s amended petition. In the summary-judgment context, courts have held that a motion need not be amended after the nonmovant files an amended petition if the original summary-judgment motion is broad enough to encompass the claims asserted in the amended petition. See Konogeris v. Pinnacle Health Facilities GP I, LLC, 657 S.W.3d 421, 426–27 (Tex. App.—El Paso 2022, no pet.); Coterill-Jenkins v. Tex. Med. Ass’n Health Care Liab. Claim Tr., 383 S.W.3d 581, 592 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2012, pet. denied) (first citing Rotating Servs. Indus., Inc. v. Harris, 245 S.W.3d 476, 487 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2007, pet. denied); and then citing Lampasas v. Spring Ctr., Inc., 988 S.W.2d 428, 435–36 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 1999, no pet.)). We see no reason why this principle should not apply in the analogous TCPA context. See Bookout v. Shelley, No. 02-22-00055-CV, 2022 WL 17173526, at *12 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth Nov. 23, 2022, no pet.) (recognizing that the TCPA and summary-judgment contexts are “analogous”); see also McElroy v. Shaeffer, 05-25-00078-CV, 2025 WL 3722805, at *7–8 (Tex. App.—Dallas 2025, no pet.) (explaining the procedural similarities between TCPA and summary-judgment practice and applying reasoning previously applied to summary-judgment practice in the TCPA context). Indeed, in a case that was procedurally similar to this one, one of our sister courts concluded that certain newly asserted claims contained in the appellee’s amended petition—which had been filed after the appellant’s TCPA motion—were properly before the court because the TCPA motion was broad enough to encompass each of 10 the new claims. See Graves v. Evangelista-Ysasaga, No. 14-22-00137-CV, 2023 WL 370589, at *2 n.3 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] Jan. 24, 2023, pet. denied). Here, ECMC’s motion sought the dismissal of Owens’s claims under the TCPA because they were all based on ECMC’s accessing and using NSLDS data in connection with a judicial proceeding (i.e., the Federal Lawsuit). Because the newly asserted claims in Owens’s amended petition were based on the same alleged misconduct as his original claims, ECMC’s dismissal motion was broad enough to encompass these new claims. Accordingly, ECMC was not required to amend or supplement its dismissal motion, and the trial court did not procedurally err by dismissing the claims asserted in Owens’s amended petition under the TCPA. See Graves, 2023 WL 370589, at *2 n.3; see also Konogeris, 657 S.W.3d at 426–27; Coterill-Jenkins, 383 S.W.3d at 592; cf. Buckingham Senior Living Cmty., Inc. v. Washington, 605 S.W.3d 800, 807 n.4 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2020, no pet.) (“[A]n amended petition does not moot a pending TCPA motion.” (citing Gaskamp, 596 S.W.3d at 469)). C. TCPA Analysis 1. Step One: The TCPA Applies to Owens’s Claims To carry its burden under the TCPA’s first step, a movant must “demonstrate[] that the legal action is based on or is in response to” a protected legal right. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 27.005(b). ECMC asserts that the TCPA applies because 11 Owens’s state-court lawsuit constitutes a “legal action” that “is based on or is in response to” ECMC’s exercise of its right to petition. See id. §§ 27.001(4), (6), 27.005(b)(1)(B). We agree. For TCPA purposes, a “legal action” is “a lawsuit, cause of action, petition, complaint, cross-claim, or counterclaim or any other judicial pleading or filing that requests legal, declaratory, or equitable relief.” Id. § 27.001(6). Owens’s state-court lawsuit clearly falls within this definition.6 See id. Further, ECMC demonstrated that Owens’s lawsuit was “based on” or “in response to” ECMC’s exercise of the right to petition. See id. § 27.005(b)(1)(B). Under the TCPA, “[e]xercise of the right to petition” means, among other things, “a communication in or pertaining to . . . a judicial proceeding.” Id. § 27.001(4)(A)(i). And “communication” is broadly defined as “includ[ing] the making or submitting of a statement or document in any form or medium, including oral, visual, written, audiovisual, or electronic.” Id. § 27.001(1). 6 Owens argues that the trial court “misidentif[ied]” the Federal Lawsuit as the relevant “legal action” for purposes of its TCPA analysis, but the record reflects that the trial court did no such thing. The trial court’s final judgment explicitly recites that Owens’s state-court lawsuit—not the Federal Lawsuit—“constitutes a ‘legal action’ within the meaning of the [TCPA].” Owens’s argument betrays his confusion concerning two distinct TCPA terms: the “legal action” that ECMC asked the trial court to dismiss and the “judicial proceeding” in which ECMC exercised its right to petition. See Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 27.001(4)(a)(i), (6). Although the trial court certainly recognized that the Federal Lawsuit was the “judicial proceeding” in which ECMC had exercised its right to petition, it never treated the Federal Lawsuit as the relevant “legal action.” 12 The Texas Supreme Court recently clarified that to be “based on” or “in response to” a protected activity, a legal action need not solely depend on proof of the protected activity or have been instituted solely in reaction to the protected activity. See Walgreens v. McKenzie, 713 S.W.3d 394, 400–01 (Tex. 2025). Rather, a legal action is “based on” a protected activity if the legal action is “factually predicated on” the protected activity or if the protected activity is the “gravamen,” “a main ingredient,” or “a fundamental part” of the legal action. See id. at 400. Similarly, a legal action is “in response to” a protected activity if it is “in answer or reaction to” the protected activity. See id. As noted, all of the claims that Owens has asserted—both in his original and amended petitions—are based on the same factual allegations, namely, that ECMC improperly accessed his NSLDS data and used it to support its summary-judgment motion in the Federal Lawsuit. Certainly, ECMC’s filing of the purportedly ill-gotten data as summary-judgment evidence in the Federal Lawsuit constitutes “a communication in or pertaining to . . . a judicial proceeding” and, thus, an “exercise of the right to petition.” See Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 27.001(4)(A)(i); Tiedjop v. Volleyball Sch. LLC, No. 01-22-00097-CV, 2023 WL 2602776, at *3 (Tex. App.— Houston [1st Dist.] Mar. 23, 2023, no pet.) (noting that it was undisputed that appellants had exercised their right to petition for TCPA purposes by filing a partial summary-judgment motion); Beving v. Beadles, 563 S.W.3d 399, 406 (Tex. App.—Fort 13 Worth 2018, pet. denied) (agreeing that “affidavit testimony provided in [an] underlying lawsuit constitute[d] a communication made in a judicial proceeding”). And despite Owens’s contention that his claims are based solely on ECMC’s conduct—its unauthorized accessing of the NSLDS database—not its subsequent communication of that data in the Federal Lawsuit, the record reflects that ECMC’s summary-judgment filing is a “fundamental part” of Owens’s lawsuit and that he filed his state-court claims “in answer or reaction to” ECMC’s use of his NSLDS records in the Federal Lawsuit. See Walgreens, 713 S.W.3d at 400. For example, in the very first paragraph of his original petition, Owens stated that his lawsuit arose from ECMC’s “access and use of [his] restricted federal student-loan records,” and he specifically alleged that ECMC had “used” this NSLDS data “for litigation purposes without [his] consent or documented legal authority.” [Emphasis added.] Later in that same pleading, he alleged that ECMC had “obtained a benefit” in the form of a “litigation advantage” by “acquiring and using” this NSLDS data. [Emphasis added.] Further, in his amended petition, he complained that Zitur had “intruded into [his] private affairs by personally accessing and using” his student loan records, and he asserted a public-disclosure-of-private-facts claim based on his allegation that ECMC had “plac[ed] confidential, borrower-level financial information into unredacted judicial filings.”7 [Emphasis added.] Additionally, at the hearing on ECMC’s motion to 7 Despite Owens’s allegation that his records were “unredacted” when they were filed in the Federal Lawsuit, he acknowledged at the hearing on ECMC’s motion to 14 dismiss, Owens admitted that he had filed his state-court lawsuit because ECMC had “accessed [his] records . . . for purposes in the [Federal Lawsuit]” and agreed that ECMC had accessed his records “to support a motion for summary judgment . . . in the federal case.” He also acknowledged that it was only through ECMC’s summary- judgment filing in the Federal Lawsuit that he had learned of ECMC’s supposedly improper accessing of the NSLDS database in the first place. Taken together, the allegations in Owens’s pleadings and his statements on the record clearly demonstrate that ECMC’s filing of the NSLDS data in the Federal Lawsuit was a “main ingredient” of Owens’s state-court claims or, at a minimum, that he filed his state-court lawsuit “in answer or reaction to” this federal-court filing. See id. Accordingly, ECMC satisfied its step-one burden to show that Owens’s claims fall within the TCPA’s scope.8 See Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 27.005(b); Walgreens, 713 S.W.3d at 400. dismiss that ECMC had, in fact, redacted his “personal identifying information,” including his social security number, from its summary-judgment filing. 8 We reject Owens’s argument that ECMC failed to satisfy its step-one burden because he alleged that ECMC had engaged in “illegal conduct [and] cyber-incursions,” which are not protected by the TCPA. As the Texas Supreme Court has recently made clear, TCPA-protected communications and conduct need not be lawful to be subject to the TCPA under step one. See Weldon v. Lilith Fund for Reproductive Equity, 735 S.W.3d 702, 708–09 (Tex. 2026). Rather, whether ECMC’s accessing of the NSLDS database—and its filing of the obtained data in the Federal Lawsuit—was unlawful is a “merits question[] for steps two and three.” See id. at 709. 15 2. Step Two: Owens Failed To Present Clear and Specific Evidence of His Claims’ Essential Elements Having concluded that ECMC satisfied its initial burden to show that the TCPA applies to Owens’s claims, we must determine whether Owens carried his burden under the TCPA’s second step to establish each essential element of his claims by clear and specific evidence. See Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 27.005(c); Lyden v. Aldridge, No. 02-23-00227-CV, 2023 WL 6631528, at *3 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth Oct. 12, 2023, no pet.). We conclude that he did not. In his briefing, Owens asserts in conclusory fashion that he “presented clear and specific evidence supporting each essential element of his claims,” but he fails to include any citations to the record to support this assertion or to otherwise identify any evidence supporting his claims. See Tex. R. App. P. 38.1(i). And our review of the record has revealed no such evidence. Indeed, as the trial court noted in its judgment, “[i]n responding to ECMC’s [TCPA] [m]otion, [Owens] provided no affidavit, declarat[]ion, or other testimonial or documentary evidence in support of his claims.” Because Owens failed to present clear and specific evidence of his claims’ essential elements, we conclude that the trial court did not err by granting ECMC’s TCPA motion and dismissing all of Owens’s causes of action. See Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 27.005(b), (c). 16 III. CONCLUSION Having concluded that the trial court did not err by granting ECMC’s TCPA motion and dismissing all of Owens’s causes of action, we affirm the trial court’s judgment.9 /s/ Mike Wallach Mike Wallach Justice Delivered: October 8, 2026 9 ECMC included certain filings from the Federal Lawsuit in the appendix to its brief and has asked us to take judicial notice of them. Owens objects to this request and has filed a motion to strike the federal-court documents from ECMC’s appendix. Because the essential facts concerning the Federal Lawsuit are undisputed—i.e., that ECMC used the purportedly improperly acquired NSLDS data to support its summary-judgment motion—and because the appellate record clearly reflects both that the TCPA applies to Owens’s claims and that Owens failed to establish a prima facie case for his claims’ essential elements by clear and specific evidence, the federal filings included in ECMC’s appendix have little to no bearing on the outcome of this appeal. Nevertheless, because ECMC has requested that we take judicial notice of these federal filings and has provided us with copies of the documents, we grant ECMC’s request and take judicial notice of them. See Tex. R. Evid. 201(c); Freedom Commc’ns, Inc. v. Coronado, 372 S.W.3d 621, 623 (Tex. 2012); see also Stephens v. LNV Corp., 488 S.W.3d 366, 372 (Tex. App.—El Paso 2015, no pet.) (“Where litigants request the [c]ourt [to] take judicial notice of federal pleadings and ‘provide us with copies of the pleadings, we are required to do so.’” (quoting Surgitek, Inc. v. Adams, 955 S.W.2d 884, 889 n.4 (Tex. App.—Corpus Christi 1997, pet. dism’d))). Accordingly, Owens’s motion to strike is hereby denied. 17