Can Texas court require litigants to file all documents through LexisNexis' "File and Serve?"

Here's an interesting case from Texas involving a class action suit against the Montgomery County courts for requiring litigants in that locale to use LexisNexis's commercial filing feature called "File and Serve" rather than the state's gratis online filing system "Texas Online."  Apparently the Lexis system has fees attached ('natch) to court filings which litigants (or at least members of this class action) understandably don't want to pay:

As reported yesterday in Texas Lawyer, the court clerk in Montgomery County has been bouncing any filings not made through the service, which tacks on fees, service charges and other costs every time a litigant wants to file something.

You can read more about this story at Law.com, here, at 3 Geeks and a Blog, here, and at the Texas Lawyer website, here.

(jbl)