If Texas House Democrats do not return by Friday, Ken Paxton will ask state courts to declare their seats vacant.
By Aarón Torres
Dallas Morning News
https://www.dallasnews.com/
Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer
AUSTIN — If Texas House Democrats who broke quorum do not return to the Capitol by Friday, Attorney General Ken Paxton says he will ask state judges to declare their seats vacant.
More than 50 House Democrats left the state on Sunday, denying the chamber a quorum and barring lawmakers in the chamber from taking any legislative action. The Democrats left to protest a rare mid-decade redistricting effort that President Donald Trump desired to give Republicans a better chance at keeping control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections.
The map proposed last week by State Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, would shift five congressional districts to the GOP’s favor. Hunter’s map, contained in House Bill 4, was set to be debated on Monday. With a clear majority in the Texas House, Democrats had few options to prevent the map from passing the legislature. Dozens of Democrats flocked to Chicago, New York and Massachusetts to try and run out the clock on the special session.
Lawmakers have until the session ends on Aug. 19 to pass the map. On Monday, House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, signed arrest warrants directing state troopers to find the absent lawmakers and bring them back.
However, because the arrest warrants can only be enforced within state lines, Paxton threatened to ask state courts to kick the Democrats out of office.
“The people of Texas elected lawmakers, not jet-setting runaways looking for headlines,” Paxton said in a social media post. “If you don’t show up to work, you get fired.”
In a Tuesday news release, Paxton argued that Democrats breaking quorum constitutes “abandonment of office” and that he would ask district courts to declare the seats vacant. If the seats are declared vacant, it would allow Gov. Greg Abbott to call for a special election to have the lawmakers replaced.
However, should Paxton ask district courts in Texas to declare the seats vacant, any ruling would likely be appealed until it reaches the Texas Supreme Court.
If the redistricting plan does not pass ahead of the Aug. 19 deadline, Abbott can call the lawmakers back for a second special session. Previous quorum breaks by Democrats have only delayed the legislative action, but not stopped it.
Paxton said as much Tuesday in an appearance on The Glenn Beck Program.
“Governor Abbott is not going to back down,” Paxton told viewers. “He’ll just keep calling them back until they show up.”
By Aarón Torres
Aarón is an Austin native who previously covered local government for The Kansas City Star and high school sports for the Knoxville News Sentinel. He is a University of Texas graduate, and Spanish is his first language.
This story, originally published in The Dallas Morning News, is reprinted as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and Texas Metro News. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in southern Dallas.
