Judge Ed Follis Admonished for 6.5 of 20 Hours

CASE FILE AT A GLANCE
Judge	Ed Follis
Court	Justice of the Peace, Precinct 4, Lynn County, Texas (O’Donnell). Also municipal judge for the City of O’Donnell
CJC number	25-0188
Sanction	Public admonition. No order of additional education
Date issued	June 23, 2025. Commission meeting June 4 to 5, 2025
Signed by	Gary Steel, Chair, State Commission on Judicial Conduct
Requirement	20 hours per academic year, September 1 to August 31. At least 10 in person through the Texas Justice Court Training Center; up to 10 may be online
Shortfall	6.5 hours for the 2023 to 2024 academic year, completed October 7 and 8, 2024, after the year ended
Canons violated	Canons 2A and 3B(2) of the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct
Authority	Tex. Const. art. V, sec. 1-a(8)
Status now	Off the bench. He did not file for re-election in 2026 and Lynn County now lists a different judge in the seat

THE DISCIPLINE LADDER (TEXAS) The State Commission on Judicial Conduct issues sanctions in four grades, in ascending order of severity: admonition, warning, reprimand, and censure. Each can be private, meaning confidential, or public, meaning posted with the judge’s name on it. A public admonition is the lowest public rung. Education cases are not limited to it: in February 2026 the Commission suspended a senior judge in Hidalgo County under Rule 10(a) over the same kind of shortfall. Removal and involuntary suspension are a separate track requiring a Review Tribunal or the Supreme Court of Texas.

What Judge Follis Did

Ed Follis was the elected justice of the peace for Precinct 4 in Lynn County, a rural county south of Lubbock, and he also served as municipal judge for the City of O’Donnell. That second job matters more than it looks, and we will come back to it.

A Texas justice of the peace owes 20 hours of approved judicial education each academic year, which the order defines as September 1 through August 31. At least ten of those hours must be earned in person through the Texas Justice Court Training Center. Up to ten may be satisfied electronically.

He asked for a waiver of the in-person requirement for the 2023 to 2024 academic year so he could take everything online, on the ground that he cannot walk any distance because of his knees. The Justice of the Peace Education Committee did not grant it. He completed 6.5 hours, on October 7 and 8, 2024, which is to say five and six weeks after the academic year had closed.

Then the letters

On February 26, 2025, the Commission mailed and emailed him a Letter of Inquiry, to the court’s mailing address and his county email, asking for a written response by March 19. He did not respond at all.

On April 1 the Commission sent it again by email, with a deadline of April 8. He replied the next day, April 2, saying he had taken 20 hours of judicial education online in September and October of 2024, that he had made an error in how he submitted some of the hours, and that there should be a waiver from his orthopedic doctor on file at the training center. On April 3 the Commission wrote back to tell him an email was not a response to a Letter of Inquiry and that he needed to give a detailed explanation of his circumstances. His written responses arrived on April 25.

In them he said he completed his hours on October 7 and 8. The training center’s records agreed on the dates and disagreed on the arithmetic: 6.5 hours, not 20. Asked directly about the committee’s waiver of in-person training, his written answer was two words. “Completed Hours.”

He enclosed the letter from his orthopedic doctor. He did not enclose the education certificates he had said were on file.

The Rule That Could Have Saved Him

He told the Commission he had completed his education through the Texas Municipal Court Education Center, the provider for municipal judges, and that he had not received the certificate. He is a municipal judge, so that is a plausible place for him to have been sitting in a classroom.

And Texas has a rule for exactly that situation. Rule 3d of the Rules of Judicial Education, which the Commission quoted in this very order, provides that a person serving in the dual capacity of justice of the peace and municipal judge may be permitted to receive credit toward the requirements for each office by attending a course for either office, so long as the curriculum is pertinent to the duties and responsibilities of both.

So the wrong-provider problem was solvable. Hours earned on the municipal side could have counted on the justice court side if the curriculum fit. That is not what sank him.

What sank him is that there were only 6.5 of them, they landed after the deadline, and ten of the twenty had to be in person unless a committee said otherwise, which no committee did. Rule 3d can move hours between two offices. It cannot manufacture the other 13.5, and it cannot waive the in-person ten. A cross-crediting rule is no help to a judge whose problem is that the hours do not exist.

A Doctor’s Note Is Not a Waiver

He believed a waiver was in place. He had a letter from his orthopedist about his knees, he had sent it in, and in his mind that was the waiver.

The training center confirmed there was no waiver from the Justice of the Peace Education Committee on file for him, and he produced no granted waiver with his responses. A physician’s letter is evidence offered in support of a request. A waiver is an act by the body with power to grant one. The first does not become the second by being mailed.

His knee condition is almost certainly real, and on these facts it is the sort of thing a committee might well have accommodated. The order does not say why the committee declined, and nothing here suggests the request was frivolous. The failure was procedural, and procedural failures are the ones that are easiest to fix and easiest to overlook: confirm in writing that the waiver was granted, and keep the certificate.

The Rules He Broke

Rule	What It Requires
Canon 2A	A judge shall comply with the law.
Canon 3B(2)	A judge shall maintain professional competence in the law.
Rules of Judicial Education, Rule 3a(2)	Each justice of the peace must, as an official duty, complete 20 hours of approved instruction each fiscal year. At least 10 must be met by attending courses provided by the Texas Justice Court Training Center, and up to 10 may be satisfied electronically.
Rules of Judicial Education, Rule 3d	A person serving in the dual capacity of justice of the peace and municipal judge may be permitted to receive credit toward each office by attending a course for either office, provided the curriculum is pertinent to the duties of each.
Rules of Judicial Education, Rule 9b	After each grant year the register reports to the applicable education committee the name of any judge who did not accumulate the minimum hours, including judges leaving office who do not plan to run again.
Rules of Judicial Education, Rule 10a	The committee advises the judge of the deficiency. The judge has 30 days to submit a statement of the reasons that prevented compliance. Absent a waiver for good cause, the committee reports the judge to the Commission by November 1.

The Only Justice of the Peace on the List

The Commission keeps a standing list of education cases, and it is short. Across fiscal years 2023 through 2026 it holds seven names. Two municipal judges in fiscal 2023, two more in fiscal 2024, two sanctions in fiscal 2025, and one senior judge in fiscal 2026. Every one of them is a municipal judge or a senior judge except this one. Follis is the only justice of the peace on the list.

The companion case is Case File No. 26, Judge Crystal Duke of the Roxton Municipal Court, admonished eleven weeks earlier for logging one of her sixteen required hours. The comparison cuts in an unexpected direction. Duke did less, one hour against his 6.5, and she never applied for a waiver at all. But she gave the Commission a single straight account from the beginning, and she was admonished and ordered to sit down with a mentor for the one hour she missed.

Follis asked for a waiver, which is more than Duke did, and then answered a direct question about it with two words and sent a doctor’s note instead of a certificate. He was admonished with no education order attached at all, in a case about missing education. The Commission does not explain the difference, and the orders do not have to. But read side by side they suggest the thing being measured was never only the hours.

How It Played in the Press

Not at all. It appears on the Commission’s public sanctions list and on its education page, and no news outlet appears to have covered it. Lynn County has fewer than six thousand residents and no newspaper of its own, which is most of the explanation.

For a rural justice court, the practical consequence of a public admonition is that the document exists. Whether anyone in the precinct ever learned of it is a different question, and the answer here is probably not.

Where Is He Now

He is off the bench, and he left on his own terms.

When the 2026 cycle came, he did not file. The campaign filings for Justice of the Peace Precinct 4 list two candidates, and his name is not among them. The official canvass of the March 3, 2026 Republican primary records Sharla Louise Edwards winning the Precinct 4 nomination with 296 votes against 24 for the other candidate, which in Lynn County decides the office.

Lynn County’s own justice court page now lists Judge Sharla Edwards as the justice of the peace for Precinct 4. The only trace of her predecessor left on the site is a pay-by-phone jurisdiction code still labeled with his name. The records reachable here do not show the date or the manner of his departure, only that he did not seek another term and that someone else holds the seat.

So the sequence ran: a shortfall in the 2023 to 2024 academic year, a report to the Commission, an admonition in June 2025, and no re-election bid the following spring. Whether the one caused the other is not something the public record answers.

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Sources

Primary source

• State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Public Admonition, In the Matter of the Hon. Ed Follis, CJC No. 25-0188 (June 23, 2025). scjc.texas.gov

Rules and reference

• Texas Code of Judicial Conduct, Canons 2A and 3B(2). txcourts.gov
• Failure to obtain judicial education, sanction history, fiscal years 2023 through 2026. scjc.texas.gov
• Public sanctions, fiscal year 2025. scjc.texas.gov
• What the State Commission on Judicial Conduct can and cannot do. texasdwisite.com

Lynn County records

• Justice of the Peace, Lynn County, current officeholders. co.lynn.tx.us
• Official canvass, 2026 Republican primary election, Lynn County. co.lynn.tx.us
• Elections, campaign filings and results, Lynn County. co.lynn.tx.us

This post summarizes a public order of the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct and public election records. The judge’s physician, the members of the Justice of the Peace Education Committee and the losing candidate in the 2026 primary are referred to here only by role, and no one other than the judge is the subject of any finding. Nothing in the order suggests the judge’s medical condition was feigned or that his waiver request was frivolous, and the order does not state why the committee declined it. The date and manner of his departure from office are not established by the records cited here. This is general commentary on a public record, not legal advice.