Abbott renews push to oust state lawmakers who fled Texas to block redistricting vote

Gov. Greg Abbott has renewed his legal push to oust dozens of legislators who fled Texas in August to briefly derail a hyperpartisan redrawing of the state’s congressional district boundaries.

In a letter to the state Supreme Court, Abbott’s attorneys say even though Democrats abandoned their effort to block the redistricting maneuver, those who left the state — including Texas House Democratic leader Gene Wu — should still lose their jobs over it.

“Ouster is the time-tested consequence for conduct like Wu’s. Absent action by this Court, quorum breaking threatens to become our new normal,” Abbott’s lawyer Trevor Ezell wrote.

It’s a sign the bitter feud over the GOP’s push to redraw congressional boundaries ahead of the 2026 midterm elections is still raging, and that Abbott sees the moment as a chance to remove one of the last-ditch protections for the state’s beleaguered Democratic minority.

Dozens of Texas Democrats fled the state in August to deprive the Legislature of a quorum to meet in a special session and pass Abbott’s redistricting plan, which is expected to net the GOP as many as five new congressional seats. The plan ultimately passed after Democrats returned to Austin, citing efforts by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to counteract the Texas measure.

Democrats say so-called quorum breaking has been permissible since the nation’s founding. But Abbott filed an extraordinary action with the Texas Supreme Court, urging the justices to declare those who fled the state to have legally “abandoned” their offices, allowing him to set special elections.

Wu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The letter from Abbott’s office was intended to alert the Texas Supreme Court of another development: a state appeals court ruling in favor of former Texas lawmaker Beto O’Rourke’s bid to fundraise off the quorum break.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued to block O’Rourke from the fundraising campaign, saying it may have been supporting illegal activity by the fleeing state lawmakers. A district court judge agreed that O’Rourke could not finance the quorum break andissued a restraining order. But the appeals court ruling last week warned that the court’s decision — and the legal bid by Paxton himself — appeared to be an unconstitutional “prior restraint” on free speech.

“Tools, whether legal or political, for eliminating quorum breaks may exist. But our Texan founding fathers — like our American founding fathers — took prior restraints on political speech out of the tool kit when they enshrined the right to free speech in our Constitution,” the panel concluded.

Abbott’s office, which has been in tension with Paxton over the legal strategy to respond to the quorum break, emphasized that his office is not seeking to “restrain political speech at all.”

“Instead, this petition seeks judicial recognition of a past fact — that Wu has, by word and deed, abandoned his office,” Ezell wrote.