The U.S. Justice Department withdrew from a lawsuit alleging that Texas’ legislative and congressional district maps drawn after the 2020 U.S. census discriminated against Latino and Black voters by denying them an equal opportunity to participate in the electoral process.
The department made the decision last week, according to court filings.
It’s the latest in a series of moves by the Justice Department under President Donald Trump to retreat from voting rights cases initiated by the Biden administration. In January, the department withdrew from a voting rights case it had brought last year against Virginia over the removal of names from voter rolls, and last month it withdrew a request to participate in a redistricting case in Louisiana.
The case involves Texas’ 2021 redrawing of 2021 of political maps for congressional and state legislative districts after the 2020 census. The updated maps were meant to reflect the state’s population growth, which, according to the census, was driven almost entirely by Texans of color. However, the Republican-drawn maps diluted their political power, splitting up areas that had high minority populations and giving white voters even greater control. That sparked complaints from the federal government and other groups that the maps discriminated against voters of color.
Republican lawmakers and attorneys representing the state in court have denied that their work violated the Voting Rights Act or constitutional protections against discrimination.
The remaining plaintiffs in the case are coalitions of organizations representing Latino and Black Texans, such as the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Texas NAACP, and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, among others, as well as individual Texans.
They had filed suits in 2021 arguing that the Texas Legislature discriminated against voters of color in the drawing of its political district maps. Their lawsuits were later consolidated.
The plaintiffs are calling for the court to rule that the maps are unconstitutional and unlawful, and to order that they be redrawn in a way that does not “dilute the strength of Latino voters in Texas,” court documents state.
The maps have affected communities of Latino and Black voters in North Texas, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area, in the Rio Grande Valley, and in Central Texas, near one of the nation’s largest military communities in Killeen.
See here for the last update that I was aware of, way back in 2022. The last update from the remaining case, with private plaintiffs, was a couple of months later. In a normal world, this would be an appalling abandonment of justice; in Trump world, it’s just another Thursday. I’d be more upset but then I never had any faith that the plaintiffs would be able to get a favorable result, given the corruption of the Fifth Circuit and SCOTUS. I admire what they’re doing, I just believe the deck is fully stacked against them. Hell, even in a more fair world we’re already in 2025 and we haven’t had a court date yet. That’s coming on May 21 for the remaining case, so we’ll see what happens. Keep your expectations very low.