All three incumbent Republicans on the Supreme Court of Texas were reelected — a blow to Democrats who had hoped backlash to the court’s abortion rulings would deliver them their first victory to the high court in 30 years.
As it stands, Republicans will continue to hold all of the court’s nine seats until at least 2026, when three other justices are up for reelection.
So what does that mean for cases appealed to the Texas Supreme Court?
It is important to note that, in Texas, the Supreme Court hears civil appeals while criminal cases are decided by the Criminal Court of Appeals.
Ryan Autullo, who covers Texas courts for Bloomberg Law, said it isn’t surprising that the GOP won across the board in Texas statewide races.
“I’ve had friends ask me, ‘when is the state going to finally flip?’ I said, ‘keep betting on red. Eventually it’ll turn blue, but by then you will have won a lot,’” he said. “We’re over 30 years now since a Democrat has been elected statewide. And there’s just more Republican voters than Democratic voters in the state right now.
We thought that after 2018, when O’Rourke ran a really strong campaign against Ted Cruz for a U.S. Senate seat, that by now we would be at least a purple state and it just hasn’t happened. So, yes, the Supreme Court seats that were up for election last week remain red. And to the chagrin of Democrats, the results were not all that close.”
» GET MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE STATE: Sign up for Texas Standard’s weekly newsletters
The Texas Supreme Court will continue with oral arguments in the current term until March.
“Each term kind of has its own theme. This one is the ‘Ken Paxton term.’ There are three cases that are really significant to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. One has already been heard, and that’s whether he can face discipline from the state bar for interfering with the results of the 2020 election on behalf of President Trump,” Autullo said.
“And then there’s a couple others – a whistleblower complaint against him, whether he has to give a sworn deposition in that matter – and then a third one as well. He is trying to investigate an El Paso nonprofit, Annunciation House, that serves the migrant population. And the Supreme Court will decide how far he can go in that investigation.”
The rest of the cases the court will likely see in the next year or so will be decided based on what comes out of the next legislative term, Autullo said.
“Last session, the Supreme Court heard a number of legal challenges to bills that were passed by the Legislature,” he said. “I think the Supreme Court will be waiting to see what the Legislature does next year when they meet in January and what controversial laws they pass at that point. And certainly they will get up to the high court.
So it’s just a cycle of the Legislature passing controversial bills, then they get heard before the Supreme Court. And that’s been going on for decades.”
Autullo said if Democrats want to win court seats in Texas, the party has to invest more money and energy into them.
“If you go to the level below the Texas Supreme Court, intermediary courts in Texas, Republicans won 31 of 32 contested contests this year. They flipped 23 seats from Democrats in Dallas and Houston, in San Antonio, in Edinburg,” he said.
“It was disruptive to Democrats wanting to kind of reshape the judiciary in Texas. So they’re losing at the intermediary level. They’re not winning at the highest level. I think they need to invest more money into these races if they want to win. But there doesn’t seem to be a big appetite to do it from the left right now.”
