Residents sue to remove Tarrant County District Clerk Tom Wilder after complaints about his job

A Southlake man filed a petition Aug. 4 seeking to remove the Tarrant County District Clerk, alleging the clerk had intentionally removed and disordered files in a court case. 

Arnold Yan alleged District Clerk Tom Wilder intentionally left out and disorganized court documents while transferring his case from one court to another. He said while most of the filings were restored, two filings are still missing from his case after it was transferred. 

Yan said he requested a jury because he wouldn’t trust a judge to decide the case. 

“I believe our District Clerk in Tarrant County is the root cause of all this breach of court record integrity, and I believe they have fundamental issues,” he said. 

The District Clerk’s office oversees the operations of the county’s courts, which includes managing files and collecting fees, according to the office’s website. The office received over 66,000 case files last year. 

Yan’s case comes as the clerk’s office is trying to modernize its decades-old court record system. Wilder said in the District Clerk’s April newsletter the office is working on replacing the case management system, which was built in the 1980s and is proprietary to Tarrant County. 

“This is an arduous task but must be done before we begin to experience major breakdowns,” Wilder wrote. “A crash of the system would be devastating to the operation of the District Courts and the Rule of Law.” 

Yan alleged many of his files were misdated, duplicated and reorganized whenever his case got transferred. 

“This is not against Wilder personally. It’s against the integrity of our court records,” he said. 

Another case filed in June also seeks to remove Wilder for allegedly not accepting court filings, which is being brought forth by Jose Portalatin. County officials told Portalatin a judge would not accept the filing because it had text messages, emails and photos attached, according to court records. 

Both cases are being argued pro se — meaning those bringing forth the cases are not employing a lawyer. 

Wilder, a Republican, has served as the District Clerk since 1995 and was last reelected in 2022. His current term expires in December 2026. 

KERA News reached out to Wilder for comment and will update this story with his response.

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