Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan has signed civil arrest warrants for 52 missing House Democrats directing authorities to bring them back to the chamber, which has been stymied for a month in the absence of a quorum.
The warrants were signed late Tuesday after the House voted in favor of compelling the Democratic legislators to return “under warrant of arrest, if necessary,” and are expected to be delivered Wednesday to the sergeant-at-arms, according to local news reports.
Some of the more than 50 Democrats who initially fled to Washington, D.C., broke ranks and returned Monday to Austin.
Despite those adds, the House was still shy of the 100 legislators needed for a quorum to conduct almost all business, including the elections bil that Democrats call unconstitutional and racist vote-suppression.
But votes to create and enforce quorums are among the votes exempt from the usual quorum requirement.
The way for the arrest order was cleared earlier Tuesday when the Texas Supreme Court lifted a lower court’s order that protected from arrest the Democratic lawmakers who have fled the state.
Upon coming back to Texas, the Democrats now can be detained and brought back to the legislature for a second special session.
Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, asked the state’s highest court earlier this week to lift a restraining order issued by a Travis County district judge that blocked the arrest of the lawmakers once they came back to the Lone Star State.
The justices’ move doesn’t allow for the lawmakers to be jailed, but instead they can be forcibly escorted to the legislative chamber to conduct business.
“The Supreme Court of Texas swiftly rejected this dangerous attempt by Texas Democrats to undermine our Constitution and avoid doing the job they were elected to do,” Renae Eze, a spokeswoman for Mr. Abbott, told reporters. “We look forward to the Supreme Court upholding the rule of law and stopping another stall tactic by the Texas Democrats.”
A coalition of progressive groups, including Planned Parenthood Votes of Texas, Progress Texas and the Sierra Club Lone Star chapter, said in a statement that the Democrats can’t cave.
The “only way to preserve our right to vote and the best way to fight is to stay off the House floor,” they said, according to the Texas Tribune.
Democratic state Rep. Ron Reynolds said his colleagues would be forced against their will to the House floor.
“We wouldn’t be free to leave,” he said in a video statement on Twitter.
“We will continue to fight against the Republicans voter-suppression bills,” Mr. Reynolds told Fox News. “We are planning on staying in D.C. advocating for federal voting rights legislation until the U.S. Senate goes on August recess towards the end of the week.”
More than 50 Texas Democrats fled to D.C. last month in protest of an election-security bill and have pushed Congress to pass federal legislation that would override increased voting requirements passed in red states like requiring a photo ID.
Several of the members flew on private jets to the nation’s capital without masks and contracted COVID-19.
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