The Republican Party of Texas will hold its convention online after losing a court battle with Houston officials who blocked the gathering for public health reasons.
Despite a surge in new coronavirus cases, the State Republican Executive Committee voted July 2 to go ahead with an in-person convention in Houston. The SREC, which is the 64-member governing board of the state party, split 40-20 on the question.
Shortly thereafter, the Houston Mayor directed the city’s legal department to review the contract between the George R. Brown Convention Center and the GOP.
The convention center operator then invoked a force majeure clause to cancel the convention, citing “the unprecedented scope and severity of the COVID-19 epidemic in Houston.”
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner also had warned that his health inspectors had the authority to shut down the convention if certain guidelines were not followed.
The Republican Party sued on July 10, asking the Texas Supreme Court to direct the City and
Houston First, operator of the convention center, “to perform their obligations in connection with the Convention, including performance of their contractual obligations, and performance of all legal obligations to ensure the free exercise of association and assembly.”
The justices stated in a per curiam opinion, “The (GOP) argues it has constitutional rights to hold a convention and engage in electoral activities, and that is unquestionably true. But those rights do not allow it to simply commandeer use of the Center.”
“(The convention center operator’s) only duty to allow the (Republican) Party use of the Center for its Convention is under the terms of the parties’ Agreement, not a constitution.”
One justice, John Devine, dissented, saying that the pandemic didn’t meet the bar of an “occurrence’ as defined in the convention center’s force majeure clause. He wrote, “Surely the Mayor’s day-to-day feelings about public health and the wisdom of hosting an in-person convention cannot be the triggering force-majeure condition.”
“I’d like to think that force-majeure events, if they have any meaning at all, transcend personal whim and subjective notions. Such clauses cannot be used as a contractual deus ex machina—a mere pulled-out-of-the pocket ‘gotcha!’ card,” he wrote in the dissenting opinion.
The convention was set to happen July 16-18 and was expected to draw 6,000 attendees.
In a press release Monday night, State GOP Chairman James Dickey said, “The State Republican Executive Committee voted this evening to move our State Convention online.”
“We thank our incredible team of attorneys for their valiant work exhausting all legal remedies fighting the partisan Democrat shutdown of our in-person Convention…”
