U.S. sues Texas over its new voting maps
AUSTIN, Texas — The Justice Department sued Texas on Monday over its new redistricting maps, alleging the plans discriminate against minority voters, particularly Hispanics, who have fueled the state’s population boom.
The lawsuit claims the Republican-controlled state violated part of the Voting Rights Act in drawing new district boundaries for its congressional delegation and state legislature. It’s the Biden Justice Department’s first legal action challenging a state’s maps since states began redrawing their maps this year to account for population changes.
The lawsuit notes that most of Texas’ population growth over the past decade came from Black, Hispanic and Asian people, but alleges that the new maps drawn by state Republicans dilute these communities’ votes by denying them opportunities to choose their representatives. It says the maps pack Black and especially Hispanic communities into bizarre-shaped districts — a Dallas-area district is described as “seahorse” shaped — while preserving seats for white Republicans.
“This is not the first time that Texas has acted to minimize the voting rights of its minority citizens,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said at a news conference with Attorney General Merrick Garland. “Decade after decade, courts have found that Texas has enacted redistricting plans that deliberately dilute the voting strength of Latino and Black voters and that violate the Voting Rights Act.”
The litigation comes as Republicans and Democrats jockey for an edge in the oncea-decade redistricting process, which has already reached new levels of gerrymandering.
The lawsuit also plays out during a changed legal landscape for redistricting challenges. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that it won’t referee disputes over maps drawn to benefit a political party.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, condemned the litigation as an intrusion by the Democratic administration.
“The Department of Justice’s absurd lawsuit against our state is the Biden Administration’s latest ploy to control Texas voters,” Paxton tweeted. “I am confident that our legislature’s redistricting decisions will be proven lawful, and this preposterous attempt to sway democracy will fail.”
The lawsuit, filed in the Western District of Texas, cites several congressional districts in which Republicans drew tortured lines to lower the share of Black and Hispanic voters in their party’s congressional districts.
In West Texas’ competitive 23rd District, the map trimmed out areas near El Paso and San Antonio to lower the share of Hispanic voting-age residents by 9%.
In the Dallas area, it pulled Black and Hispanic residents in the northwest suburbs out of the district of Republican Rep. Beth Van Duyne, who narrowly won her reelection bid last year against Candace Valenzuela, a Democratic Black Hispanic candidate.
In the Houston area, where the share of the white population is dwindling, the map kept six of 10 House districts as white-majority or plurality districts.
Texas has had to defend its maps in court after every redistricting process since the Voting Rights Act took effect in 1965. But this will be the first since a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling gutted a provision of the Voting Rights Act that had required Texas and other states with a history of racial discrimination to have the Justice Department approve the maps.
The case is the second civil rights lawsuit the Biden administration has filed against Texas recently. Last month, it sued to overturn the state’s new voting law, claiming a bevy of new restrictions passed by the legislature would disenfranchise citizens in the state.
It remains illegal for mapmakers to discriminate on the basis of race while drawing legislative lines.
Additionally, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits line-drawers from diluting the voting power of minorities by scattering them among districts and preventing them from choosing their preferred candidates. That’s what the lawsuit alleges Texas Republicans did.