AUSTIN, Texas — Texas’s highest civil court declined Friday to rule that Democratic state representatives who temporarily left Texas in 2025 to prevent a vote on new congressional district maps supported by President Donald Trump had abandoned their positions.
The Republican-dominated court delivered a setback to the governor and state GOP leaders who wanted to impose harsh penalties on the more than 50 Democrats who traveled to New York, Illinois and Massachusetts to prevent the maps from being voted on during a special legislative session. Republican state officials had pursued their arrest and imposed financial penalties to force their return to the state Capitol.
The governor had contended in legal papers filed directly with the state’s top civil court that state Rep. Gene Wu, who heads the House Democratic caucus, along with other legislators had effectively quit their positions.
Wu had maintained that he wasn’t abandoning his role during the quorum break, but was using his right to oppose the legislation.
When rejecting the governor’s petition, the court’s decision authored by Justice James Blacklock observed that the Republican-controlled Legislature had sufficiently addressed the situation through actions like imposing financial penalties on the absent legislators, and that they came back voluntarily after several weeks.
“In the end, a quorum was restored in two weeks’ time, without judicial intervention, by the interplay of political and practical forces,” Blacklock wrote.
“Courts have uniformly recognized that it is not their role to resolve disputes between the other two branches that those branches can resolve for themselves,” the opinion said.
Should the situation occur again and the Legislature proves unable to effectively force lawmakers to return, the court might eventually decide whether judicial intervention is appropriate, the decision stated.
“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!” Wu said in a statement Friday. “Abbott was wrong, weak, and after all his bluster, he couldn’t come and take a damn thing.”
Wu and his colleagues ultimately came back to Texas, and the redistricting plan was approved and became law after the governor signed it.
Wu had contended that since he had returned to the Capitol and the redistricting plan was ultimately enacted, there was no longer any basis for the court to intervene.
“Their return is robust proof that they never intended to abandon their offices,” Wu argued in legal briefs. “Despite the overheated rhetoric, this quorum break was always understood to be temporary.”
The Texas departure escalated into a major national political showdown as Trump pushed Texas and other Republican-led states to redraw their congressional boundaries to help Republicans keep control of the U.S. House. The Texas redistricting push triggered comparable initiatives in multiple states as governors from both parties committed to redrawing maps designed to benefit their political candidates in the 2026 midterm elections.
