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Texas Democrats had been out of state for less than 48 hours when Gov. Greg Abbott moved to have their seats declared vacant.

The emergency legal filing represents an unprecedented escalation of Abbott’s effort to pass a new congressional map that adds additional GOP seats, as demanded by President Donald Trump. It flies in the face of Texas’ own founding documents, centuries of legal precedent and a recent Supreme Court of Texas ruling, legal experts say.

Even Attorney General Ken Paxton, a fellow Republican, threw cold water on Abbott’s strategy, filing his own brief saying that while he “appreciates the Governor’s passion,” he does not have the authority to bring this type of case.

But just because legal precedent is not on his side doesn’t mean Abbott’s case is doomed. The long-shot filing is before the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court, where Abbott has appointed six of nine justices. Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock was Abbott’s former general counsel, as was Justice James Sullivan.

“They have their own independent authority, of course, but it does put them in a tough political position,” said Andrew Cates, an Austin-based attorney and expert on Texas ethics law. “They don’t want to be in the position of potentially biting the hand that initially fed them.”

Abbott’s petition specifically targets Rep. Gene Wu, the House Democratic leader, serving as a test case that could eventually allow him to remove every member who left the state. Abbott asked the court to rule by Thursday; the justices gave Wu until the end of the day Friday to respond.

It is hard to argue that leaving the state to deny the Legislature a quorum is equivalent to abandoning an office, legal experts say. Texas’ constitution sets an intentionally high threshold for quorum — two-thirds of the chamber, compared to half in most other states — in an effort to limit the majority’s complete authority. And centuries of quorum breaks, both in Texas and other states, have resulted in expulsion only once, during the colonial era, when members of the New Jersey assembly, upon regaining quorum, voted to remove their peers who stayed away.

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