Friday, Jan. 24, 2025
Fact brief: Does Texas state law allow residents to recall school board members?
School board members in Texas are not subject to recall elections.
Recall elections allow citizens to remove elected officials from their position before the end of their term.
State law does not include provisions outlining the power of recall. Instead, cities with a home-rule charter — a legal document written and decided by local officials and voters — may have the ability for recall.
More than 90% of the 351 home-rule charter cities in Texas have recall provisions.
Individual school board members also may not be removed through an action from the rest of the school board.
State district courts may remove a school board member for incompetency, official misconduct or intoxication after a resident files a petition for removal and a judge holds a trial by jury.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
- University of Texas School of Law Dealing with Rogue Board Members
- University of Houston Undoing Democracy? Recall Elections in Texas 2004-2022
- Texas Municipal League Legal Q&A
- Texas Local Government Code Removal of county officers from office; filling of vacancies
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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.
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