AUSTIN (KXAN) — A Texas lawmaker who slept in the House chamber of the Texas Capitol on Monday night filed a lawsuit shortly into her protest, according to online records. That lawsuit claims Rep. Nicole Collier is being illegally confined.
“Representative Collier is under restraint by virtue of the Speaker of the House’s order placing her into the custody of law enforcement prior to the Wednesday, August 20, 2025, Session,” the lawsuit says.
Collier is refusing to leave the chamber because she would need to be monitored by a Department of Public Safety escort should she do so.
Before the House adjourned Monday, House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, ordered the doors to the chamber to be locked. He said that members needed written permission to leave the chamber. But he added an extra step for Democrats who broke quorum and had arrest warrants issued. The speaker said those members would be granted written permission to leave only after agreeing to be released into the custody of a designated Department of Public Safety officer who will ensure they return to the House on Wednesday at 10 a.m.
State Rep. Nicole Collier, D-Fort Worth, refused and was therefore not allowed to leave.
“We have a lawyer working on getting a court to enter an injunction to allow all of us to be free from DPS escorts or DPS trails,” Collier told NBC’s Ryan Chandler. “And so hopefully that’s successful, and we won’t be here too long. But I am willing, and my heart has not changed. I still believe that this is wrong, and I have no intention to stop.”
In a planned public display Tuesday afternoon, some House Democratic members tore up the permission slips required to leave the chamber, and announced they’ll join Collier in sleeping inside the chamber Tuesday night, a news release said.
“She’s a prisoner of nothing more than her own imagination,” Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Midlothian) said of the lawsuit. “This is like bad Kabuki theater, I’m talking like elementary, junior high-level grade dramatic actions that we’re seeing here. That’s all there is to say, this is pure theater.”
‘We conclude that it does’: Supreme Court ruling from 2021
Several years ago, members of the Texas House of Representatives fled the state to deny the House quorum to prevent voting legislation they disagreed with in a special session.
“They fled the state to escape the jurisdiction of the House, whose internal rules provide that absent members may be ‘arrested’ and their attendance ‘secured and retained,'” a 2021 Supreme Court opinion explained.
Nearly a month after leaving the state, those lawmakers sued “seeking an injunction prohibiting their arrest.”
The Supreme Court ultimately ruled against those members.
“The legal question before this Court concerns only whether the Texas Constitution gives the House of Representatives the authority to physically compel the attendance of absent members. We conclude that it does,” that ruling said.
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Author: Grace Reader
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