Judges: Does Supreme Court ruling affect Texas districts?
Lawyers on all sides of Texas map challenge ordered to weigh in.
Hours after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down two North Carolina congressional districts because of their effect on African-American voters, the first
impact was felt in Texas. Three federal judges, oversee
ing a legal challenge to Texas districts adopted in 2013, sent an order Monday to lawyers on both
sides seeking information about howthe ruling might apply to the Lone Star State.
The judges also wanted state lawyers to confer with Gov. Greg Abbott to determine his willingness to call a special session to redraw the state’s 36 congressional districts and 150 state House districts in light of Monday’s ruling. Abbott’s office did not respond Monday, but it is considered unlikely that the governor would act while the Texas maps are still being litigated.
With a trial on the maps set to begin July 10 in San Antonio, the judges set an aggressive schedule — wanting to know Abbott’s thoughts by Friday, while giving lawyers two weeks to chew over the ramifications of a significant
Supreme Court ruling on race and politics.
Lawyers for civil rights groups and minority voters and politicians seeking to overturn the Texas maps were pleased with Monday’s order — and happy to draw parallels between North Carolina and Texas.
“The North Carolina case is a great case for us,” said Luis Vera Jr., a lawyer for the League of United Latin American Citizens. “I think that adds strength to our arguments that this case in Texas involved intentional discrimination.”
Renea Hicks, representing Latino politicians who also challenged the Texas maps, said the North Carolina decision recognized that mapmakers had used race for partisan ends — the same accusations made in Texas.
“It adopts our view that it was race, and not party (affiliation), that ultimately was the dominant force,” Hicks said. “Minorities cannot be cannon fodder in partisan wars, and that’s what the Republicans in Texas have been using them for.”
The office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton could not be reached for comment Monday evening.
After meandering for years, the case challenging the Texas maps heated up in March, when the court panel determined that Texas Republicans redrew three congressional districts in 2011 to intentionally discriminate against Latino and black voters, who tend to support Democrats.
The 2-1 ruling singled out Travis County, which was broken up into five congressional districts — four held by Republicans and one by a Democrat, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Austin.
By drawing Doggett’s district with a majority Hispanic population extending into San Antonio, the Republican-controlled Legislature eliminated an existing Democratic district while creating the “facade of complying” with the Voting Rights Act, the majority ruled.
About six weeks later, in another 2-1 ruling, the court panel ruled that Republicans redrew Texas House districts in 2011 to gain partisan advantage by intentionally and improperly diluting the voting strength of minority Texans.
“The impact of the plan was certainly to reduce minority voting opportunity statewide, resulting in even less proportional representation for minority voters,” the majority said.
The twin rulings, however, were only half the battle in the long-running case.
The maps drawn in 2011 were never used in an election because the court panel, after finding problems with the U.S. House and Texas House districts, drew new maps in 2012. Those courtdrawn maps, adopted by the Legislature in 2013, also were challenged as discriminatory and will be the subject of a five-day trial in July.
The court is under pressure to provide a ruling on the 2013 maps by Oct. 1 to give election officials time to prepare for the 2018 elections. Candidate filing for the primaries begins in mid-November.