A Texas Democrat who spent the night on the House floor of the state Capitol on Monday after refusing to give her consent for a police escort to leave the building has filed a habeas corpus petition, alleging “illegal confinement.”
State Rep. Nicole Collier told MSNBC’s Ali Vitali on Tuesday that she is willing to stay in the chamber “as long as it takes.”
“This is the fight that all of us have in resisting, you know, the end of our democracy, basically,” Collier said.
After fleeing the state two weeks ago to protest the Texas GOP’s effort to institute a new congressional map designed to give Republicans five more seats in the U.S. House, Texas Democrats returned home this week, allowing the redistricting effort to proceed.
State House Speaker Dustin Burrows is requiring all Democrats who returned to be supervised by the Texas Department of Public Safety if they leave the chamber to guarantee their attendance for Wednesday’s vote on the new map. Because she willingly returned to her duties, Collier argues there’s no need to compel her attendance, so she cannot be forcibly detained.
“The moment that the directive was issued, I felt like it was wrong,” Collier told Vitali from the House floor. “It’s just wrong to require grown people to get a permission slip to roam about freely, so I resisted. I objected, the only way I knew how.”
When Vitali asked what was achieved by fleeing the state given that the gerrymandered map remains on track for approval, Collier said Texas Democrats have succeeded in making the word “gerrymandering” a “household name” and prompting action from states such as California, where Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has called for a Nov. 4 special election in hope of redrawing his state’s electoral map to offset GOP gains in Texas.
Texas Democrats will “continue to fight through a legal battle on the floor,” said Collier, adding: “They say take that high road — well, you know, that high road has crumbled. We’re on a dirt road, and we’re going to meet them on that dirt road and get down and dirty, just like they are.”
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
