Can Texas secede from the United States?

Yes. The honest, precise answer is that Texas can lawfully pursue independence, and nothing in the Constitution stops it. We say "independence" rather than "secession" because that is the accurate word for what this is, but the question people type is "can Texas secede," so let us answer it head-on.

There is no law that forbids it

If a state leaving were illegal, the Constitution would say so. It does not. Article I, Section 10 carefully lists the things states are not allowed to do, and leaving the union is not among them. The Framers knew how to forbid a thing when they wanted to. They did not forbid this. That silence is not a gap. In a system where the federal government has only the powers the states handed it, anything not handed over stays with the states.

The Tenth Amendment seals it

The Tenth Amendment says the powers "not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Nowhere did the states delegate to Washington a power to stop one of them from leaving, and nowhere did they accept a prohibition on doing so. So the decision rests where it always did, with the people of the state. The Supreme Court itself, in United States v. Darby (1941), described the Tenth Amendment as confirming "that all is retained which has not been surrendered." The power to keep Texas was never surrendered.

The one case against you concedes the point

Skeptics fall back on Texas v. White (1869). But that case was about bonds, the "indestructible Union" line in it was a comment rather than a binding holding, and the real holding it produced was overruled in Morgan v. United States (1885). More telling still, the opinion's own author wrote that the union could be dissolved "through consent of the States." The case used to prove it cannot be done admits that it can.

Texas's own constitution says the people decide

The most direct authority on this point was written by Texans, ratified by Texans, and still governs Texans. Article 1, Section 2 of the Texas Constitution declares 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." That is the foundation. Texas independence is the people of Texas exercising a right their own constitution guarantees.

It runs through the ballot box, not a back door

There are no secret clauses and no shortcuts. The legal path runs through the Texas Legislature, which puts the question on the ballot, and then through the people, who answer it. That is the Texas Independence Referendum Act. The vote is the decisive act, because under Article 1, Section 2 the power belongs to the people. Independence is not declared from a courthouse or seized in a crisis. It is decided at the polls.

The bottom line

Yes, Texas can do this, lawfully and peacefully, through a vote of the people. The block has never been the Constitution. It has been politicians unwilling to let Texans vote, and that is a political problem with a political fix.