The Department of Justice is suing Texas over its new redistricting maps, alleging that lawmakers intentionally discriminated against Latino and Black voters while redrawing the state’s political districts this year.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in El Paso, takes aim at Texas’ new maps for Congress and the state House of Representatives. The Biden administration alleges that several of the districts were drawn “with discriminatory intent” to increase the electoral power of the state’s white voters despite massive population growth among racial minorities.
“Our complaint today alleges that the redistricting plans approved by the Texas State Legislature and signed into law by the governor will deny Black and Latino voters an equal opportunity to participate in the voting process and to elect representatives of their choice, in violation of the Voting Rights Act,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in a news conference.
Texas’ new maps, redrawn this year to reflect the state’s population increases since 2010, are already facing seven legal challenges in state courts. Critics have assailed them as attacks on Texas’ minority voters, noting that the state’s GOP-led Legislature declined to add any new majority-minority districts even as people of color drove 95 percent of the state’s 4 million-person population growth. Hispanic Texans comprised roughly half of that total.
“Our investigation determined that Texas’ redistricting plans will dilute the increased minority voting strength that should have developed from these significant demographic shifts,” Gupta said.
She added that the new maps were adopted through a “rushed process” that allowed for “minimum” public participation. The department is asking the court to prevent any elections from taking place using the new maps; the state’s primaries are scheduled for March 1.
Politico adds some details.
The suit notes that Texas’ past redistricting maps have repeatedly been smacked down by courts over the last several decades. But [Attorney General Merrick] Garland acknowledged during the press conference that this case presents more challenges than past decades because the so-called preclearance requirement, which mandated that jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory election laws get changes approved by either the Department of Justice or a D.C.-based federal court, was gutted by a mid-2010s Supreme Court decision.
“There are two problems: One, it means that we don’t get a chance to look at these things before they go into effect, which is a very significant aspect of our tools, and instead requires that we challenge every case individually,” Garland said. “And second, it flips the burden of proof.”
[…]
The suit takes particular issue with the 23rd Congressional District — a sprawling West Texas seat now held by GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales — accusing Texas Republicans of intentionally eliminating its status as a district where Latinos could elect their candidate of choice.
More than 50 percent of the voting age population in the new 23rd District is Latino, but the Department of Justice claims — as it has in previous litigation against other iterations of this seat — that GOP mapmakers swapped out Latinos who vote regularly with low-propensity Latino voters.
The end result, the suit says, is “an effort to strengthen the voting power of Anglo citizens while preserving the superficial appearance of Latino control.”
The suit also noted the lack of a new Latino opportunity seat in Houston’s Harris County and accused the legislature of having “surgically excised minority communities from the core of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex (DFW) by attaching them to heavily Anglo rural counties, some more than a hundred miles away.”
The suit also singles out the new 24th Congressional District, held by freshman GOP Rep. Beth Van Duyne. By reducing the district’s swath of northwest Dallas County, the mapmakers dropped the Latino citizen voting age population from 40 percent to 23 percent. The suit says the map again strengthens the Anglo voting bloc.
GOP mapmakers created three new deep blue seats — in Austin, Houston and Dallas — to accommodate a growing number of left-leaning voters and keep them from overwhelming the red-leaning districts surrounding them. None of those seats have a Latino-majority. Republicans will likely control at least two dozen of the state’s 38 seats under this new map.
In the Houston area, the suit notes that the new 38th Congressional District was drawn “to give Harris County’s shrinking Anglo population control of yet another Congressional seat” even though “most of that population growth occurred within the Latino community.” That seat leans heavily Republican, and the current frontrunner in the GOP primary, Wesley Hunt, is Black.
Garland also urged Congress to restore those preclearance requirements that were effectively stripped out of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder, which was decided in 2013.
As noted before, there are multiple lawsuits that have already been filed, and with the exception of the Gutierrez/Eckhardt suit, which raises different questions, have been combined into one action. Michael Li expects this lawsuit to be assigned to the same three-judge panel as the others as well. He also says this:
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The lawyers litigating cases like the Texas case will do their best – and they will have great, compelling facts – but they still will be hamstrung by the fact that Congress can’t find a way to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.— Michael Li (@mcpli) 4:52 PM – 6 December 2021
Not really much else to say here – if the Senate can ever get around to passing one of the voting rights bills that the House has sent them, it could make the plaintiffs’ case even stronger, but unless that happens it’s hard for me to have a lot of optimism, despite the glimmer that Michael provides. It’s barely possible that the panel could put the March primary on hold, but to say the least I don’t expect that. A copy of the lawsuit is here, and the Trib and the Texas Signal have more.