Illinois Judge Denies Texas AG’s Request to Help Arrest Absent State Democrats

An Illinois judge on Aug. 13 denied Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s request to enforce civil arrest warrants for Texas House Democrats who left the state to try blocking a mid-cycle redistricting effort that could give Republicans five additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Judge Scott Larson of the Eighth Circuit Court of Illinois ruled that his court lacks the jurisdiction to do what Paxton was seeking.

“As the Petitioner has failed to present a legal basis for the court to obtain subject matter jurisdiction over this cause of action, this court is without jurisdiction to grant Petitioner’s emergency motion to rule on pleadings,” Larson wrote in a Wednesday ruling.

Dozens of Texas House Democrats left the Lone Star State on Aug. 3 and have assembled in Illinois in an attempt to stop the redistricting by denying the state House of Representatives a quorum. Last week, Paxton asked the Eighth Circuit Court of Illinois to enforce civil arrest warrants, signed by Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows, for the fleeing Democrats.

After several Texas House Democrats appeared with California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently, Paxton filed a similar request in the Golden State.

Paxton and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also asked the state Supreme Court to remove some of the fleeing lawmakers from office. While Texas’s high court declined to immediately rule on the request this week, it has set a deadline for early September to receive responses from both sides before making a ruling.

Abbott said Sunday that he would continue calling for special sessions of his state’s Legislature “for literally years” until the lawmakers return to vote on redistricting.
“I’m authorized to call a special session every 30 days. It lasts 30 days. And as soon as this one is over, I’m gonna call another one, then another one, then another, then another one,” Abbott told “Fox News Sunday.”

It’s not clear how long the House Democrats will stay out of Texas. On Wednesday, state Rep. Gene Wu, the House Democratic Caucus chair, told reporters that he believes their walkout has inspired Democrat-led states such as California and New York to respond to Abbott’s efforts by redrawing their maps in retaliation.

When “I first talked about it, we thought and we discussed that maybe it was a kind of a grand, maybe too ambitious or high-minded, that we’re going to try to excite other people, to get other people into action, to start a fire in this country that will help take our country back,” Wu said.

“In the past week, we have heard from California, we have heard from New York, we have heard from Illinois that people are ready to stand up. People are ready to fight back.”

In June, Abbott called a special session of the Legislature to consider the state’s congressional map because the U.S. Department of Justice had warned that several districts may have violated the Voting Rights Act.

President Donald Trump said Republicans could pick up as many as five House seats through what he described as a “simple redrawing,” gains that would help the GOP retain control of the House in the 2026 midterm elections.

On Aug. 2, a Texas House committee advanced legislation that would redo the map. The next day, enough Democrats fled Texas to deprive the state House of a quorum.

Joseph Lord contributed to this report.