The Texas House overwhelmingly voted Monday to track down and arrest more than 50 Democrat lawmakers who fled to prevent the Legislature from redrawing the state's congressional map.
Republican House Speaker Dustin Burrows said he would immediately sign civil warrants for each of the legislators, empowering the chamber's sergeant-at-arms and state troopers to arrest and bring them to the Capitol, The Texas Tribune reported.
The Democrats will not face civil or criminal charges from the arrests. The warrants apply only within state lines, the Tribune reported, making them largely symbolic as most of the legislators fled to Illinois, New York and Massachusetts.
The House used the same tactic to force Democrats back to work in 2021, when a majority left for Washington, D.C., to protest GOP voting reforms. Some lawmakers challenged the warrants in court, obtaining an injunction against arrests that were later struck down by the Texas Supreme Court.
The Texas Constitution "enables ‘quorum-breaking' by a minority faction of the Legislature; it likewise authorizes ‘quorum-forcing' by the remaining members," the court ruled, according to the Tribune.
Rep. Charlie Geren, R- Fort Worth, set the table for the warrants by motioning with a "call of the House," requiring all members to stay within the chamber unless excused, the Tribune reported. Any members not present can be "sent for and arrested, wherever they may be found," by the sergeant-at-arms, according to House rules.
Democrats left the state Sunday afternoon to deny the House a quorum — the number of people necessary for the chamber to advance legislation — and delay passage of the new congressional map.
The current congressional map, drawn by a Republican-dominated Legislature in 2021, has netted 25 GOP seats in the past two elections. President Donald Trump reportedly has championed a move to redraw Texas' 38 districts to help protect the party's narrow House majority in next year's midterm elections.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott recently called the Legislature into a special session to address the flooding disaster in Kerr County, among other issues that include redistricting.
"This is not a decision we make lightly, but it is one we make with absolute moral clarity," state Rep. Gene Wu, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement Sunday, accusing Abbott of "using an intentionally racist map to steal the voices of millions of Black and Latino Texans, all to execute a corrupt political deal."
On the House floor Monday, Burrows condemned the members who fled, saying they had "shirked their responsibilities," and thanked the 90 members who were present, according to the Tribune.
"You understand that the issues before us, disaster recovery, fighting for the families who lost loved ones in the floods, human trafficking and more, are not abstract policy debates," Burrows said. "Instead of confronting those challenges, some of our colleagues have fled the state in their duty."
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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