The Leach Amendment: How Austin Shielded Itself After a TEXIT Lawsuit Landed at the Capitol

Daniel Miller opens this Late Night Coffee Talk on the back of a busy travel week, with a Seguin Republican Women’s Club that went from neutral to ready-to-organize and a virtual seat at a French academic conference on independence and sovereignty where Texas, he says, was the belle of the ball. Then he gets to the story everyone wanted: the lawsuit, and what the Texas Legislature did about it.

On April 19, process server Casey Littlejohn served state Representative Jeff Leach in the middle of his committee hearing. The suit, filed by Morgan McCombs, targets Leach for branding TEXIT supporters guilty of treason and sedition. Miller’s argument is the one the movement has made for years. Treason and sedition are defined crimes, treason punishable by death, and advocating for Texas independence fits neither. Accusing someone of a crime is defamation per se, and defamation has never been protected speech. Leach’s response, Miller notes, was a tantrum on the floor followed by Representative Schofield’s amendment to House Bill 3474, quietly folded into a routine courts bill, to bar service of process on legislators and staff during session. Miller’s read is blunt: the peon class can be served at the deli counter, on an oil lease, or on the toilet, but the political class gets to sit above and apart.

He also dismantles the April 25 USA Today fact check claiming Texas has no legal right to secede, calling its sources a circle of self-citations leaning on Texas v. White and a dubious 2010 Scalia memo. The tell, he says, sits at the bottom of the story: USA Today’s fact-checking is supported in part by a grant from Facebook, the same Meta that TNM is suing over blocked links and that promptly slapped a false-information label on the movement’s viral video. Miller argues Texas v. White could not survive modern scrutiny under Jacobson v. Massachusetts or Missouri v. Holland, and points to 66 percent of likely Texas voters who believe Texas has the right to leave. His throughline: the escalating attacks are proof the movement is over the target.