Overview
- State vote calls on Wednesday declared Democrats winners in nine statewide judicial contests, including all four Texas Supreme Court seats on the ballot and full control of the newly created 15th Court of Appeals.
- Despite winning the four seats up this year, Democrats did not gain a working majority on the Texas Supreme Court, which remains a 5-4 Republican court after these results.
- Democrats led the vote in all three contested seats on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals as counts continued, though the court as a whole was likely to retain a Republican majority based on early returns.
- The 15th Court of Appeals, which hears many suits brought by or against the state and business-court challenges, will be entirely Democratic after incumbents appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott were ousted.
- The election breaks long-running GOP control of Texas’s high courts — the last Democratic wins on these benches date to the 1990s — and could reduce the attorney general’s use of state forums to press national policy, with downstream effects on Fifth Circuit dockets and corporate oversight depending on final tallies and who holds the attorney general’s office.