Democratic members of the Texas state House have now filed a federal lawsuit against Republican leaders in Texas, including Governor Greg Abbott, over what the legislators say are violations of their First Amendment rights. These claimed violations involve efforts by top Texas Republicans to get Democratic legislators back to Texas in order to complete work on a proposed set of new voting restrictions. Democratic members of the Texas state House left the state and have remained outside of it amid efforts to pass these restrictions, thereby blocking their chamber from obtaining the quorum that would be necessary to proceed with the legislation.
The lawsuit was filed by 22 Democrats from the Texas state House, and, besides Abbott, it names Texas state House Speaker Dade Phelan and state Rep. James White (both Republicans) as defendants. Abbott has intensely campaigned against the Democratic legislators’ efforts, even claiming that they would be “arrested” upon their eventual return to the state. There is a provision allowing for the detention of absent lawmakers, but Texas state Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D) drew a stark distinction between these permitted detentions and “arrests.” Furthermore, Abbott doesn’t even have the authority to order detentions of any sort in this situation — those are the purview of the Texas state House Speaker. The issue, though, was clear — Abbott was seeking to pressure the legislators into doing his bidding.
The new lawsuit against Abbott and the other Republican leaders claims that they sought to “deny, coerce, threaten, intimidate and prevent” the legislators and their constituents from exercising their rights, including the rights to “peacefully assemble to redress their grievances” and “speak publicly about the exercise of their constitutional rights.” Democratic state legislators who left Texas went to D.C., where they’ve advocated for the passage of new protections for voting rights on the federal level.
On Saturday, officials attempted to kickstart a new special legislative session after Democrats’ absences sank a previous one — but yet again, enough Democrats were absent to ensure that a quorum was not present. Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair Rep. Chris Turner commented as follows on Saturday:
‘Texas House Democrats continue in our fight to stop Texas Republicans’ efforts to undermine our democracy by passing their anti-voter legislation. Day by day, we will keep fighting with everything we have to protect Texans’ freedom to vote.’
Still, it’s not clear how long that Democrats might opt to stay out of the state in sufficient numbers to keep Texas officials from completing work on the proposed restrictions.
