Election Law—The SCOTX Report

24-0221·Petition For Review

The Court denied a motion for rehearing on March 7, 2025, of its September 27, 2024 denial of Reynaldo Gonzalez's petition for review of a suit under Election Code § 253.131; Chief Justice Blacklock and Justice Sullivan noted their dissent from the denial of rehearing without writing.

25-0687·Mandamus

The Court declined to use its original quo warranto jurisdiction to remove Texas House members who left the State on August 3, 2025 to break a quorum: the Constitution gives each House the power to compel attendance, and a quorum was restored within two weeks by political means without judicial intervention.
The Court resolved neither whether a judicial remedy could ever be available nor any other question; Justice Sullivan concurred, suggesting how future quo warranto cases might proceed and warning that future quorum-breakers should be ready to be removed.

25-0754·Mandamus

The Court denied an emergency petition for writ of mandamus challenging the ballot language for the Austin City Council's November 2025 property-tax-increase election, and Justice Young issued a statement calling the question close but saying the denial is no precedent or endorsement of the language.
The statement noted the ballot's purpose clause lists specific programs but adds a catchall for other general fund expenditures, that a tax increase compounds in later years' voter-approval rates, and that the Court may need to give further guidance once new legislation on ballot language, S.B. 506, is tested.

25-1107·Mandamus

The Court denied mandamus to a candidate for chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court whose Republican primary application was rejected for lacking fifty signatures from each court of appeals district, and formally reserved whether Election Code § 172.021(g) is facially unconstitutional.
Mandamus was unwarranted because the challenge was brought at the last minute in an emergency of the relator's own making, he was unlikely to show a clear abuse of discretion on the merits, he did not provide his application as required, and the requested relief implicated political parties' associational rights.

26-0010·Mandamus

The Court denied mandamus to a would-be Republican primary candidate for Justice of the Supreme Court whose ballot application the party chair rejected: a fact issue existed on the signatures' validity, and an amended application filed after the deadline could not cure any defect.
Although precedent strongly favors ballot access, election cases require unusual dispatch, and cures have been allowed only where the application was filed early.

26-0916·Mandamus

A commissioners court's constitutional and statutory power to redraw precinct lines "from time to time" does not include the power to change the lines applicable to an election after that election has already begun.
A primary election and its corresponding general election are one election for this purpose, so a county cannot switch to new precinct boundaries between the two.