{"id":29140,"date":"2026-05-15T18:12:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T18:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/29140\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T18:12:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T18:12:15","slug":"democrat-gene-wu-can-keep-house-seat-texas-supreme-court-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/29140\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrat Gene Wu can keep House seat, Texas Supreme Court rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Texas Supreme Court rejected Gov. Greg Abbott<\/a>\u2019s efforts to remove Houston Rep. Gene Wu<\/a> from office Friday, saying that the Legislature was able to secure House Democrats\u2019 attendance and restore a quorum last summer without involvement from the court.<\/p>\n

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock<\/a> \u2014 a Republican and former Abbott aide \u2014 cited legal precedent in which the courts \u201chave uniformly recognized that it is not their role to resolve disputes between the other two branches that those branches can resolve for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe courts\u2019 institutional \u2018reluctance \u2026 to involve themselves in contests of factional political power,\u2019 a reluctance we reiterate and reinforce today, is a check on the judicial power \u2018of ancient standing,\u2019 not an optional preference we are at liberty to discard,\u201d Blacklock wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s ruling from the all-Republican Supreme Court is a setback for Abbott, who vowed to expel any members who refused to return to Texas to pass the GOP\u2019s new congressional map. The unusual mid-decade redistricting arose under pressure from President Donald Trump, who sought to shore up the GOP\u2019s narrow majority in the U.S. House by having Texas lawmakers draw new districts designed to give Republicans five additional seats in Texas.<\/p>\n

More than 50 Democrats, including Wu \u2014 the House Democratic leader \u2014 left the state in August to shut down the Legislature and stall passage of the GOP\u2019s map.<\/p>\n

Democrats condemned the unusual mid-decade redraw as a partisan power grab that will reduce the power of Black and Hispanic voters. The Legislature adopted the map shortly after Democrats returned, and the U.S. Supreme Court approved its usage<\/a> for the midterm elections, overruling a lower court\u2019s finding that the map was racially gerrymandered. <\/p>\n

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday left open the possibility of getting involved in any future quorum breaks, or when lawmakers purposely deny the Legislature the headcount needed to take up business.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever wrong may have been committed by the absent House members, the Texas Constitution\u2019s internal political remedies, none of which involve the judicial branch, were sufficient to the task of restoring the House\u2019s ability to do business,\u201d Blacklock wrote. \u201cShould those remedies unexpectedly prove inadequate in a future case, we might have occasion to consider whether any judicial remedy could ever be available in circumstances such as these.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a concurring opinion<\/a>, Justice James Sullivan<\/a> indicated a greater appetite for addressing future quorum breaks and potentially finding that lawmakers had vacated their offices.<\/p>\n

\u201cWere it to happen yet again, I believe the next set of quorumbreakers had better be ready to pay us a visit,\u201d he wrote. \u201cOur original jurisdiction to issue writs of quo warranto<\/a> will empower us to inquire whether they\u2019ve abandoned their legislative offices and, if we so find, to throw them out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quorum breaking has a long history in Texas politics. The state\u2019s founding fathers intentionally set the bar for quorum high, requiring two-thirds of both chambers to show up, compared to a simple majority in most states. Most recently, Democrats fled in 2003 and 2021 to delay redistricting and voting restrictions, respectively. <\/p>\n

No Texas lawmaker has ever been removed from office solely for breaking quorum. Never in U.S. history has a governor gotten the courts to remove a member of a legislature for breaking quorum. <\/p>\n

Wu on Friday declared victory after challenging Abbott to \u201ccome and take it\u201d in August.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, the Republican-controlled Supreme Court said: No. The Constitution does not let a governor erase voters\u2019 choices when their choices are inconvenient to him,\u201d Wu said in a statement. \u201cAbbott was wrong, weak and after all his bluster he couldn\u2019t come and take a damn thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the emergency petition he filed with the state Supreme Court in August, Abbott argued that Wu had abandoned his office by decamping to Illinois and declaring \u201cthis corrupt special session is over\u201d \u2014 a signal that Wu and the absentee Democrats planned to stay on the lam long enough to run out the last two weeks of the overtime session, Abbott said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is at stake here? Nothing less than the future of Texas,\u201d Abbott wrote. \u201cIf a small fraction of recalcitrant lawmakers choose to run out the clock today, they can do so for any, and every, Regular or Special Session, potentially bankrupting the State in an attempt to get their way.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his response, Wu said he had not abandoned his office, and in fact was representing his constituents more fully by refusing to allow the House to pass legislation they opposed. <\/p>\n

Wu \u201chas not died and has not been expelled from the House by the constitutionally prescribed means: a 2\/3 vote of the House,\u201d his lawyers said in a response. \u201cHis presence in another state is not a voluntary resignation \u2014 as his opposition to this petition makes evident. Respondent is entitled to serve through the entire term to which he was elected.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Texas Supreme Court rejected Gov. Greg Abbott\u2019s efforts to remove Houston Rep. Gene Wu from office Friday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[409,38,17758,287,8,366,17759,9,2058,412,17760,1253,7],"class_list":{"0":"post-29140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-democrats","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-gene-wu","11":"tag-greg-abbott","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-houston","14":"tag-jimmy-blacklock","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-redistricting","17":"tag-republicans","18":"tag-texas-house-of-representatives","19":"tag-texas-supreme-court","20":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116579948496751426","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}