Texas Supreme Court refuses to allow petition for independence referendum to be on the March primary ballot

The Texas Supreme Court has rejected calls to let Texans vote on whether the state should become independent.

The Texas Nationalist Movement had petitioned the Republican Party demanding that the question be asked in the March primary.

But it was rejected by Matt Rinaldi, chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, despite being well above the 97,709 signatures needed to add a vote. The petition was submitted with 139,456 signatures.

The rejection prompted the movement to file a lawsuit against the Republican Party, but it was almost immediately dismissed by the state Supreme Court.

“Well, we did everything we could, but the Texas Supreme Court screwed us,” Paul M Davis, attorney for the Texas Nationalist Movement, wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

The Republican Party had rejected the petition, despite having more than the number of signatories needed to add the vote to the ballot, declaring many signatures invalid. That led to a legal challenge by the Texas Nationalist Movement. The state has long clamored for independence and often references the Battle of the Alamo.

“I didn’t even want to look at the petition TNM submitted to Rinaldi to see if what we said was true. Just “no.” No explanation. No nothing. This is what the Republican establishment thinks about Texians.

“You have no right to petition your government. According to Matt Rinaldi, you are the “wrong type” of voter. The establishment won today, but we are not going away.”

Rinaldi rejected the petition, stating that “the vast majority of the petition’s signatures were invalid,” Newsweek reports.

He claimed that some signatures were missing vital information such as addresses, dates of birth and voter registration numbers.

The Republican Party of Texas also said the petition was “late” and did not meet the threshold for the number of manually submitted signatures.

The push for secession is not the first and the state has long been in favor of an independent movement, which today is called ‘Texit’. The independence movement began more than 150 years ago with an attempt to break away from Mexican control when it was known as ‘Tejas’.

Bitter fighting ensued, including a massive battle at the Alamo in 1836 in which up to 260 Texians died as they tried in vain to defend it. About 1,600 Mexicans were also injured or killed.

Despite the loss, “Remember the Alamo” became a rallying cry to quit, still in common parlance today as part of the Texit movement.

Texas has a long-standing independence movement dating back to the struggle to break away from Mexico in the early 1800s. The Battle of the Alamo became a pivotal moment (depicted in this painting) in the history of the movement

In 2022, Republicans in Texas wanted to hold a referendum to decide whether or not the state would secede from the US

The state eventually declared its independence from Mexico the same year as the Battle of the Alamo and became known as Texas.

It was a sovereign state for nine years before being annexed by the United States in 1845. Since then there have been several separatist movements.

In 2022, Republicans in Texas declared that they wanted to decide at their state convention whether or not the state would secede from the US.

Legally, Texas cannot secede from the union. There is a myth that this is possible because of the way it was annexed, but Congress’s annexation order merely stated that Texas could—at some future date—divide itself into five states. There is nothing about leaving the union.