Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) has asked the Texas Supreme Court to remove State Congressman Gene Wu from office and declare his seat vacant. Wu is the Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair and one of 57 Progressive-Democrats who ran out of Texas for the explicit purpose of denying the Texas legislature a quorum and thereby prevent it from operating at all.

Abbott’s argument centers on this [citations omitted]:

Every elected officer of this State, including Wu, swears an oath to “faithfully execute the duties of the office” to which they are elected. The principal duty of a legislator is to attend and participate in legislative sessions as required by Article III, Section 5 of the Texas Constitution. The quorum provisions further underscore that attendance is not optional; it is an affirmative constitutional obligation. The Texas Constitution authorizes the House to “compel attendance of absent members.” That power would be meaningless if members could freely make themselves absent for political advantage without consequence. Such actions also render meaningless the Governor’s authority to call a Special Session, for which the Legislature “shall meet.”
Representative Wu has openly renounced these constitutional mandates by fleeing the State of Texas to break quorum, obstruct legislative proceedings, and paralyze the Texas House of Representatives.

Wu answered via television interview (he doesn’t have to respond to the filing until late this afternoon).

Let me be unequivocal about my actions and my duty. When a governor conspires with a disgraced president to ram through a racist gerrymandered map, my constitutional duty is to not be a willing participant.
Denying the governor a quorum was not an abandonment of my office; it was a fulfillment of my oath. Unable to defend his corrupt agenda on its merits, Greg Abbott now desperately seeks to silence my dissent by removing a duly-elected official from office.

Aside from the fact that Wu’s irrelevant ad hominem inclusion illustrates the intellectual bankruptcy of his position, his oath of office requires him to obey his constitutional duty to appear in the State Congress when it is in session. There is no leeway for absenting himself solely because he disagrees with the outcome of a policy debate and ensuing vote—most especially is there no leeway for absenting himself as part of an effort to prevent that vote from occurring.

That he’s part of Party’s movement to block a single piece of legislation, a redistricting bill, from being acted on is merely the narrow, proximate implication of his action.

The question here, though, is much larger than a single disputed piece of legislation; it embraces the nature and basis of democratic governments. In a democracy, especially in a republican and representative democracy such as ours, there are those who win in a policy contest and those who lose. The foundation of (representative, republican, even popular democracy) requires that the defeat be accepted by those in the minority and that those who lost are free to try again in a succeeding, even later renewed, policy debate but are not free to shut off all legislative capacity unless and until they, this minority, get their losing position fully accepted.

Texas’ Progressive-Democratic Party politicians who are deliberately shutting down the Texas government, denying it its ability—its obligation—to legislate, are not filibustering a single piece of legislation in an effort to block its passage. Their behavior is categorically different from that. These persons are not just violating their oaths of office. They are attempting to impose, from their minority position, their demands on an entire government at the cost of no functioning government absent the majority acquiescing to them. This is the stuff of tyranny, and thus their preventing a quorum is antithetical to democratic principles. All of them should be removed from office.

Abbott’s filing can be read here.