No, Texas can’t legally secede from the U.S., despite popular myth

The Texas and U.S. flags wave outside the John H. Reagan State Office Building. (Credit: Miguel Gutierrez Jr./The Texas Tribune)

In June 2022, the Texas State Republican Convention adopted a platform 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.