Republican leaders in Texas have given Democratic state lawmakers until Friday to return to the state capitol in Austin and give the legislature a quorum or face punishments, including possibly their removal from office. The state’s supreme court has told the Texas House Democratic leader, State Representative Gene Wu, to respond by Friday to Gov. Greg Abbott’s motion to the court to have him removed from his Houston-area seat.
Thorny questions about legal rights and responsibilities abound.
Why did Texas legislators flee?
Democrats left the state to block an effort by President Trump and Gov. Abbott to redraw the state’s U.S. House maps to swing five of Texas’s 38 districts from Democratic to Republican ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Dozens of Democratic members of the Texas House used a tactic called “breaking quorum,” denying Republican State House leaders the 100 members they need to convene.
“Breaking quorum,” has been used before. Texas lawmakers staged similar walkouts in 1870, 1979, 2003, and 2021. The 1979 effort, which was meant to block a proposed change in the date of the presidential primary, is the only one of the four walkouts that ultimately succeeded. Oregon and Indiana, two other states that require a two-thirds legislative majority for a quorum, have also had walkouts.
What have Republicans done in response?
On Monday, after the speaker of the Texas House issued civil arrest warrants for the runaway Democrats, Mr. Abbott ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety to track them down.
Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, asked the F.B.I. to assist Texas authorities in their “efforts to locate or arrest” the Democratic lawmakers.
Mr. Abbott has also filed a lawsuit asking the Texas Supreme Court to remove Mr. Wu from office, arguing that his “willful refusal to appear” should be construed as a “deliberate abandonment of office.” Under state law, the court can remove legislators from office using a legal instrument called a writ of quo warranto if it finds they have “forfeited his or her office by abandonment.”
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The post Texas Redistricting Fight: Is Any of This Legal? appeared first on New York Times.
