Maggie Ellis was eating Indian takeout in her pajamas with her kids while she watched the midterm election results roll in last Tuesday.
Ellis, who currently serves on one of the state's appellate courts, was running to become the chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court. She didn't expect to win against the Republican incumbent, who was appointed to the role on a court that had been ruby red for decades.
So when early voting returns showed Ellis leading the race, she was taken aback.
"I was completely gobsmacked," Ellis told The Texas Newsroom in an interview after the election. "I was shocked. And then I was fervently hitting refresh and going to the major counties and checking their election returns and thinking, 'oh my goodness, we might actually be able to do this.'"
No Democrat has been elected to a statewide seat in Texas since 1994. That drought included the state's highest civil and criminal courts, which, at their most powerful, decide whether parents lose custody of their children and whether people are put to death.
But as part of the "blue tsunami" that overtook Texas last week, Ellis and a slate of other Democrats who ran for statewide judicial positions flipped seven of the eighteen seats on the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Democrats swept all the seats on a newly-created intermediate appeals court, one which Republican Gov. Greg Abbott had previously stacked with three GOP judges.
Republicans have dominated Texas' statewide courts for so long, there's no 21st-century playbook for how their liberal and conservative judges will get along. But party affiliation shouldn't matter to judges who are supposed to remain impartial, and rule on the law as written, Ellis said.
"We might not be politically aligned. We might not share the same values in regards to social issues," Ellis said of her soon-to-be coworkers. "But they are all very good jurists, and I think I'm hopeful that they are looking forward to the opportunity to have balance on the court, and that we will bring different ideas and different perspectives."
Shifting priorities on the high civil court
Four of the nine Republican justices on the Texas Supreme Court – all of whom had initially been appointed to the bench by Abbott – were up for re-election this year.
All of them lost, so the GOP now holds a 5-4 majority on the court. That could turn into a minority since one of the remaining Republican justices has floated the idea of retiring early, leaving a space open for Democratic Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa to fill with her own appointee.
Ellis and her fellow incoming Democrats — state appellate judges Gisela Triana and Chari Kelly, as well as Houston civil judge Kristen Hawkins — have steered clear of saying how they will rule on certain issues, as required by the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct. That means there's no way to know how they will decide cases involving divisive political issues.
Still, the current court's conservative leaning is noticeable. The Republican justices have upheld the state's bans on abortion and gender-affirming care for minors, and they've cleared the way for the state to effectively criminalize delta-8 THC.
Though there's no mechanism to reverse those rulings, Democrats could singlehandedly set the court's agenda going forward because it only takes four justices to decide which cases should be reviewed. And they're likely to make different decisions on issues the court has weighed in on previously, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.
"Executive authority, election administration, education policy, environmental regulations, health care issues like abortion, these are all now effectively in courts that are run by Democrats," he said.
Rottinghaus expects the new justices may look differently at the power of state agencies, including how much authority they have and whether they should be immune from lawsuits. And when they disagree with a ruling, he said, their dissents will serve as reference material for attorneys, lawmakers and other courts in a way that could shape the future of state law.
The Texas Supreme Court also has considerable control over the practice of law itself in the state, deciding on what evidence can be admitted in civil cases and disciplinary rules for judges. For instance, last year the justices unanimously agreed that judges across the state can decline to marry couples based on a "sincerely held" religious belief without facing sanctions.
The court's current Republican Chief Justice, Jimmy Blacklock, was a strong advocate for the change. Ellis, who defeated him to become the first openly LGBTQ+ statewide elected official in Texas, said she would like to reverse that, though she would need at least four other justices to agree.
"It was an attack on the LGBTQ community," Ellis said. "It was very personal to me. It's one of the reasons I got into the race."
The head of First Liberty Institute, a conservative Christian legal group who advocated for Blacklock's change, said in a statement that Ellis' intentions were "against religious freedom."
"The new Chief Justice is off to a regrettable start," said Kelly Shackelford. If the policy were to change, he said, "First Liberty stands ready to defend any judge affected."
The criminal justice implications of a blue wave
Three of the nine Republican Court of Criminal Appeals judges were up for reelection, and all three lost. The six remaining GOP judges still maintain a significant majority over the newcomers: former Travis County prosecutor Holly Taylor, Dallas criminal defense attorney Okey Anyiam and Dallas criminal judge Audra Riley.
The Court of Criminal Appeals has the final say on criminal matters ranging from traffic tickets to murder. It also makes decisions on all death penalty appeals.
Although Hinojosa has said she's personally opposed to the death penalty — and advocacy groups are calling on her to act accordingly as governor — the punishment remains on the table in certain cases under Texas law. That won't change with the court's new political split.
In an interview, Taylor said that while she has ethical and religious concerns about the death penalty, she won't let her personal feelings prevent her from upholding the law. She pointed out that as a prosecutor, she worked on a case that resulted in a death sentence, and she also argued that someone on death row should get a new trial.
Taylor also said she and her new colleagues wouldn't let politics influence the court the way they did in 2024. Back then, Attorney General Ken Paxton led a successful campaign to oust three longtime Republican judges on the court because they ruled he cannot unilaterally prosecute election crimes.
"The three of us coming in will come in clear-headed ... to preserve people's constitutional rights, and to do justice, and not make decisions based on what powerful special interests want us to do," Taylor said.
Paul Saputo, a criminal defense attorney based in Dallas, said he hopes the new faces on the court will look more favorably at "actual innocence" claims, where defendants ask the judges not just to reverse their conviction but to declare that they never committed the crime at all.
"Even though this is a really narrow category of cases, it is really important because we don't want murderers walking around, and we don't want innocent people in prison for the rest of their lives," Saputo said.
It's not 'business as usual' for the state's newest court
Texas' Republican-led Legislature created the 15th Court of Appeals in 2023. It handles appeals involving state agencies and complex business litigation, but since its three inaugural justices were appointed by Abbott, critics said it was unfairly stacked toward state and corporate interests.
Hinojosa voted against the creation of the court while she was in the Legislature, and all three justices recently ruled against her bid to view emails exchanged between Abbott and Elon Musk.
Now, Democrats Jerry Zimmerer and Tom Baker, both former state appellate judges, and attorney Marc Meyer will take their place following the midterms. On their joint campaign page, the winning candidates flaunted endorsements from labor unions instead of corporations and political action committees, such as the Musk-backed Texans for Lawsuit Reform PAC.
Since the court has only been operating for two years, there's not enough data to predict how the current justices would have ruled in the future, said David Coale, a Dallas appellate attorney. Now, things will be more unpredictable.
"That's very odd to have all the judges gone. There's, like, nobody left to provide continuity," said Coale.
Coale estimated that the court has been handling business cases for even less time – about six months. That makes the uncertainty even greater for those types of cases.
"We have a whole new group of people, no continuity and really a whole new docket," he said.
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