A federal judge has put the brakes on an effort by the Republican Party of Texas to close its primary elections, but the ruling is unlikely to end the debate.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk on Friday paused the Texas GOP’s lawsuit seeking to restrict participation in Republican primaries to voters registered with the party. Rather than resolve the constitutional question raised by Republicans, Kacsmaryk pointed toward the Texas Legislature, which will have another opportunity to address the issue when lawmakers return to Austin in 2027.
“Prominent Texas politicians support similar legislative action,” Kacsmaryk wrote, explaining that the lawsuit was being put on hold “because the Texas Legislature may soon amend the law challenged here.”
That leaves Texas voters with essentially the same system they have now, at least for the time being.
Texas voters do not register by political party. Instead, voters may choose which party's primary to participate in, although participating in a primary creates a party affiliation for that election year and prevents the voter from participating in another party's primary or convention during the same year.
The Republican Party of Texas challenged that system in federal court in 2025, arguing that requiring the party to select its nominees through the existing primary system violates its First Amendment associational rights. The party's lawsuit asks for closed Republican primaries while acknowledging that moving millions of voters and the state's election system to a new structure would require time.
The dispute gets at a basic question about primary elections: Who should decide who participates in choosing a political party's nominees?
Supporters of closed primaries argue that political parties should be able to choose their candidates without voters who do not identify with that party influencing the outcome. The issue has received particular attention among Texas Republicans because of concerns about so-called crossover voting, in which voters participate in another party's primary.
Those concerns intensified after the 2024 Republican primaries. Former Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan and state Rep. Gary VanDeaver survived close primary challenges, leading some Republican leaders to argue that Democratic- and independent-leaning voters helped determine those races.
Gov. Greg Abbott has also publicly backed restricting Republican primaries, saying at the Texas Republican Convention in June that he wants to make sure that “only Republicans vote in Republican primaries.”
There is another side to the debate.
An open-primary system gives Texans who do not formally belong to a political party an opportunity to participate in choosing nominees. That can be particularly significant in areas where one party dominates local politics and the primary may effectively determine who ultimately holds office.
Texas' system also is not completely open in the sense that voters can freely move between parties throughout an election cycle. As Kacsmaryk noted, “Texas’s current primary system may be distinct from a pure open primary anyways, because voting in a Texas primary does entail some level of party affiliation.”
The state's position is also important. Former Secretary of State Jane Nelson maintained that changing Texas election law was a job for lawmakers. Her successor, Secretary of State Robert Howden, has continued defending the existing system in court while indicating that his office would implement changes if the Legislature passes them.
That may ultimately be where this issue belongs.
The Legislature can debate not only whether Texas should close its primaries, but also the practical questions that come with doing so: how voters would register by party, when they could change affiliations, how independent voters would be treated and how election officials would make the transition.
Kacsmaryk's order doesn't settle whether closed primaries are preferable to the current system, and it doesn't guarantee lawmakers will change anything. It instead delays the federal lawsuit while giving elected lawmakers another chance to decide the issue.
With Texas' next primary elections scheduled for 2028, there is time to have that debate.
