The Texas Supreme Court on Friday shut down Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) effort to penalize the dozens of Democratic legislators who fled the state last summer in an attempt to block a rare mid-decade redistricting effort.
Abbott asked the all-Republican court in an emergency petition last August to find that the Texas House’s Democratic leader, Houston Rep. Gene Wu, had vacated his office when he and more than 50 other Democrats refused to return to Texas to pass a new GOP-drawn congressional map.
In a Friday opinion, authored by Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock, the Lone Star State‘s high court rejected the request.
“Whatever wrong may have been committed by the absent House members, the Texas Constitution’s internal political remedies, none of which involve the judicial branch, were sufficient to the task of restoring the House’s ability to do business,” wrote Blacklock, who was first appointed to the bench by Abbott in 2018.
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