The Case
Can Texas Secede?
The short answer is yes. The full answer covers the law, the objections, how it would actually happen, and whether Texas could stand on its own.
Yes. Nothing in the United States Constitution forbids a state from leaving the union, and the Texas Constitution says outright that the people of Texas may alter or abolish their government. What it takes is a vote of the people and a negotiated separation afterward. That has never been tried by any state, which is not the same thing as saying it can't be done.
The Texas Nationalist Movement calls this Texas independence rather than secession, and the difference isn't cosmetic. Here's why we use the word we use. This page uses "secede" because that's what most people type into a search box.
Is it legal?
Start with what the U.S. Constitution says about a state leaving. It says nothing. There's no clause forbidding it, no amendment, and no federal statute. The powers of the federal government are the ones the states handed it, and a power to hold a state against the will of its people isn't on the list.
The Texas Constitution is not quiet at all. Article 1, Section 2 says that all political power is inherent in the people and that they have "at all times the inalienable right to alter, reform or abolish their government in such manner as they may think expedient." Texans ratified that. It governs Texas today.
The full legal argument, with the constitutional text and every case that matters, is on the legality page.
What about Texas v. White and the Civil War?
Two objections come up every time.
The first is Texas v. White, the 1869 Supreme Court case that called the union "indissoluble." It was decided four years after a war, over a dissent, and it built its "perpetual union" on a phrase from the Preamble, which a later Court held can't be the source of any federal power. What the case actually held is narrower than the people quoting it think.
The second is that the Civil War settled the matter. A war decides who has the stronger army. It doesn't write law, and it didn't amend the Constitution; the text says the same thing about leaving after 1865 that it said before. What Texans are proposing now has nothing in common with 1861: a lawful vote, in the open, followed by negotiation. More on why the war settled nothing legally.
There's also a popular legend that Texas alone kept a written right to leave when it joined in 1845. It didn't, and we won't lean on it. The right doesn't come from a Texas-only clause. It comes from the principle every state was founded on, and Texas's constitution happens to state it plainly. The honest version of that story.
How would Texas actually do it?
The path runs through a ballot, not a courtroom.
The Texas Legislature passes the Texas Independence Referendum Act, which puts a binding yes-or-no question to the people of Texas. Texans vote. If the answer is yes, the terms get negotiated afterward: the treaty, the transition, the division of federal assets and obligations. That's how the plan to get the vote works, and it's the same order of events other peoples have used. Scotland voted in 2014 on whether to leave the United Kingdom, with the terms to follow if the answer had been yes. Czechoslovakia split into two countries in 1993 by agreement, with the direction settled first and the details after. Norway left its union with Sweden in 1905 after a referendum and a negotiated treaty.
Recognition from other countries follows a lawful, peaceful vote far more readily than it follows anything else. How Texas secures independence after the vote.
Has any state done it before?
No U.S. state has left the union by lawful, peaceful means, because none has tried it the modern way. Texas itself has been independent before. It declared independence in 1836, governed itself as a country for nearly ten years, and chose to join the union in 1845 through its own convention and its own vote.
Could Texas make it on its own?
That's the question underneath the legal one, and it deserves a straight answer with numbers. Can Texas afford independence? covers the economy and the budget. Texas and its own defense covers the military. Social Security and Medicare after independence covers the benefits people have already paid for.
Where the question stands
685,503 Texans across all 254 counties are on record in support of a vote. The question isn't whether Texans are allowed to decide their own future. It's whether they will.