Texas Republicans Ask Courts to Remove Democratic Lawmakers Who Fled State to Halt Redistricting

Texas Governor Greg Abbott filed a lawsuit on Tuesday asking the state’s supreme court to declare that House Democratic Caucus Chairman Gene Wu has abandoned his office by fleeing the state alongside dozens of other Democratic state lawmakers. Abbott called Wu the “ringleader of the derelict Democrats” who, by leaving Texas, have forced the state legislature to halt consideration of congressional redistricting.

The lawsuit is the latest move in an escalating standoff between Texas Republicans, including Governor Abbott and majorities in the state house and senate, and Democratic lawmakers who hold minorities in both chambers. Texas’s legislature was set to vote on a controversial redistricting plan that would redraw U.S. House districts to better advantage Republicans.

Abbott has filed an emergency petition with the Republican-dominated Texas Supreme Court to remove Representative Wu from office and allow a special election to be held for Wu’s seat. The governor cited a Writ of Quo Warranto in his filing, which challenges a person’s right to hold public office.

Wu responded in a statement, “Denying the governor a quorum was not an abandonment of my office; it was a fulfillment of my oath. Unable to defend his corrupt agenda on its merits, Greg Abbott now desperately seeks to silence my dissent by removing a duly-elected official from office.”

“History will judge this moment. It will show a Governor who used the law as a weapon to silence his people, and it will show those of us who stood for a higher principle.” Wu continued, “To Governor Abbott: You have failed the people of Texas, and you are using the courts to punish those who refused to fail with you.”

By leaving the state and traveling to Illinois, dozens of Democratic members of the Texas House of Representatives, including Wu, have deprived the chamber of a quorum, leaving it unable to vote on the redistricting legislation. After falling short of a quorum on Monday, the Texas house speaker, Representative Dustin Burrows, issued a call for absent lawmakers to return and threatened them with arrest.

Earlier on Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that he is seeking judicial orders against the Democratic lawmakers who fled the state in an attempt to halt redistricting plans that would favor national Republicans. Through these orders, Paxton is pursuing a court ruling that says lawmakers leaving the state and denying quorum amounts to abandonment of office, making their seats vacant.

“Democrats have abandoned their offices by fleeing Texas, and a failure to respond to a call of the House constitutes a dereliction of their duty as elected officials,” Paxton said in a statement. “Starting Friday, any rogue lawmakers refusing to return to the House will be held accountable for vacating their office.”

“The people of Texas elected lawmakers, not jet-setting runaways looking for headlines,” Paxton’s statement continued. “If you don’t show up for work, you get fired.”

Abbott also threatened absent lawmakers with arrest on Monday. “To ensure compliance, I ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety to locate, arrest, and return to the House chamber any member who has abandoned their duty to Texans,” Abbott said in a statement.

Abbott has limited options to retrieve or punish absent lawmakers until they return to Texas, however. State troopers do not have jurisdiction outside Texas, and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has promised to protect the Texas Democrats hiding out in his state. The arrest warrants apply only within Texas, and breaking quorum is not a crime that would legally allow authorities to pursue extradition.

Attorney General Paxton’s orders represent an alternative effort to either force Democratic lawmakers back to the state, thereby allowing Republicans to enact their redistricting plan, or expel them from office. After falling six votes short of a quorum on Tuesday, the Texas speaker adjourned the chamber until Friday, which corresponds with Paxton’s deadline for Democrats to return.

His attempt is a long shot, however, as the Texas constitution does not lay out punishments for deliberately breaking a legislative quorum. The state’s supreme court ruled in 2021 that the constitution explicitly allows for the possibility of a “quorum break” and allows remaining members to impose consequences to restore a quorum. Yet Paxton’s notion that leaving the state constitutes abandonment of office is a novel legal argument that faces serious doubts.

Paxton himself conceded on Monday that the process of vacating absent members’ seats would be difficult. “We’d have to go through a court process, and we’d have to file that maybe in districts that are not friendly to Republicans,” he said on Monday. “So it’s a challenge because every district would be different.”

If Paxton were to convince a judge to rule the seats vacant, they would need to be filled through special elections. Temporary vacancies would not lower the quorum threshold, so Republicans would still be unable to advance their redistricting bill even if all currently absent members were removed from office.

While serving as Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton is also running for a U.S. Senate seat, challenging incumbent Republican John Cornyn. Both Paxton and Cornyn are seeking the endorsement of President Trump to help win their Senate primary.

For his part, Senator Cornyn on Tuesday urged the FBI to help return Democratic lawmakers to Texas. “Since these state legislators are currently outside of Texas, the Texas Department of Public Safety may need support to arrest the fleeing lawmakers,” Cornyn wrote in a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel. “I request the FBI’s assistance, as federal resources are necessary to locate the out-of-state Texas legislators who are potentially acting in violation of the law.”

Paxton has faced various allegations of misconduct during his time in office, having been impeached and acquitted by the Texas legislature in 2023. He has also faced allegations of personal impropriety, culminating in his wife, State Senator Angela Paxton, filing for divorce from him earlier this year.

The redistricting plan that Texas Democrats are trying to stop would move five additional U.S. House seats in Republicans’s favor. Republicans currently control 25 of the state’s 38 seats in Congress, with Democrats holding the remaining 13.

Trump had requested that Abbott pursue redistricting to improve Republicans’s chances of retaining the House next year. “We have an opportunity in Texas to pick up five seats,” Trump said on Tuesday. “I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know, and we are entitled to five more seats.”

Despite being reluctant initially, Abbott agreed to put redistricting on the agenda for a special legislative session after speaking with Trump. He faced wariness from Texas Republicans currently in the House, who feared that redistributing Democratic voters into their districts could backfire and weaken their chances at reelection.

Absent a court ruling that mandates changes to House districts, pursuing redistricting outside the regular ten-year cycle is an unusual move. The bill’s chief sponsor in the Texas statehouse, Representative Todd Hunter, has openly stated the plan’s partisan motivations.

“Different from everyone else, I’m telling you, I’m not beating around the bush,” Hunter said. “We have five new districts, and these five new districts are based on political performance.”

Democratic lawmakers’ strategy of fleeing the state is unlikely to succeed in the long run, as Abbott can keep calling special legislative sessions indefinitely. Nearly all absent lawmakers would need to permanently remain outside Texas to defeat the bill rather than merely delay its passage, which would paralyze all other legislative business.