Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) asked the state’s high court Tuesday to remove a top Democratic lawmaker from office, arguing he had abandoned his job by leading dozens of his colleagues out of the state to block a GOP plan to redraw the state’s congressional map ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

The move sharply escalated a standoff that has mushroomed into a national political battle over congressional districts, with red and blue states threatening to redraw their maps to benefit their side in elections that will determine control of the U.S. House......

Legal scholars have questioned whether courts would go along with an attempt to eject the Democrats from office, in part because Democrats can argue they are continuing to perform legislative duties like responding to constituents.

Samuel Issacharoff, a law professor at New York University, said Abbott’s use of an obscure proceeding known as a writ of quo warranto “is not only illegitimate, but wholly antagonistic to the idea that this is a common democratic enterprise that we are administering.”

Such proceedings are used to claim officeholders are derelict in their duties. “This has not been used with any regularity in the United States since the post-Civil War period, to remove prior Confederate officers from being elected to Congress,” Issacharoff said.