In June 2022, the Texas State Republican Convention adopted a resolution urging the Legislature to put a referendum before the people of Texas in November 2023 “to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation.”

Secession and independence have been perennial themes throughout the history of Texas, which broke away from Mexico in 1836 and was an independent republic before it was annexed by the United States in 1845. As the United States was torn apart by divisions over whether slavery could expand into the nation’s western territories, Texas in 1861 voted to secede from the Union. In the ensuing Civil War, up to 750,000 people — more than 2 percent of all Americans — died. Following the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865, Texas was formally readmitted to the Union in 1870, during the Reconstruction Era.

Despite perennial talk of another secession, the law is clear that Texas may not leave the union.

The idea is most often raised by conservatives in the state who are angry over some kind of policy coming from the federal government — and the calls seem to become more frequent when a Democrat is occupying the White House. State Rep. Kyle Biedermann, R-Fredericksburg, filed a bill in 2021 to create a referendum election on whether Texans should create a joint legislative committee “to develop a plan for achieving Texas independence.”

“It is now time that the People of Texas are allowed the right to decide their own future,” he said in a statement announcing the legislation.

Even if the Legislature were to act on the new Republican Party proposal to put an independence referendum on the general election, it would not be legally valid.