Last year, Texas Democrats pulled off one of the few tactics available to stop Republicans from rushing through another heavily criticized gerrymandering plan: they left the state and denied the legislature the quorum needed to vote.
More than 50 Democratic lawmakers walked out, temporarily freezing the legislative process and infuriating Governor Greg Abbott and Republican leaders who were determined to push the new maps through.
Republicans eventually succeeded in passing the redistricting plan, but Abbott didn’t stop there. He also pushed to punish the Democrats who defied him by trying to have them removed from office altogether.
Even the conservative Texas Supreme Court appeared unwilling to go that far.
Justice James Blacklock wrote that the standoff had resolved itself within weeks through normal political pressure and that the judiciary had no business intervening in a fight between the legislative and executive branches.
“In the end, a quorum was restored in two weeks’ time, without judicial intervention, by the interplay of political and practical forces,” Blacklock wrote.
The court also emphasized that disputes like this are generally meant to be handled through the political process rather than by judges stepping in to settle partisan battles.
Texas Democrats celebrated the ruling as a rejection of what they viewed as Abbott’s attempt to weaponize state power against political opponents.
“When Greg Abbott threatened to arrest and expel us for denying him a quorum, we told him he should ‘come and take it.’ He tried!” Democratic caucus leader Gene Wu said after the decision. “Abbott was wrong, weak, and after all his bluster, he couldn’t come and take a damn thing.”
The battle over redistricting has become one of the defining political fights in Texas, with Democrats accusing Republicans of aggressively redrawing maps to weaken minority voting power and cement long-term control of the state government.
The ruling also represented a rare moment where even conservative judges appeared uncomfortable with how far Republican leadership was willing to go in retaliating against lawmakers who broke quorum in protest.
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