Some district maps ruled illegal

Court: New lines dilute strength of minority voters

In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas ruled late Friday that boundaries of some of the 36 congressional districts in the state violate the Voting Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

In reaction, Rick Hasen, an expert on election law with Election Law Blog wrote: “If this stands at the Supreme Court it could lead to the creation of more Texas minority districts.” He is a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine.

At issue is the ongoing court battle over Texas’ 2011 district maps and whether minority voting strength was diluted.

In December, plaintiffs including the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, the Texas Latino Redistricting Task Force and the League of United Latin American Citizens filed a motion for a ruling. They had sued the state in 2011, claiming the maps adopted for state House, Senate and Texas congressional districts were unconstitutional and harm minority voters.

The boundaries of districts are redrawn every 10 years after the census is completed.

In the opinion issued Friday night, the two-

judge majority said the rights of Hispanic voters in Southwest Texas, including Nueces County, must be addressed.

“When the Legislature decided to place the county’s Hispanic voters in an Anglo district,” the court said, it “had the effect and was intended to dilute their opportunity to elect their candidate of choice.”

They also said race predominated in the drawing of the 35th Congressional District in Central Texas represented by Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin.

U.S. District Judges Orlando Garcia and Xavier Rodriguez wrote the majority opinion.

They cited one expert witness who noted “that Harris and Fort Bend Counties added about 920,000 people between 2000 and 2010 and all the growth was minorities , as the two-county Anglo populations declined by about 42,000. The expert also said “that this minority growth and its local (generally southwestern Harris County and the eastern half of Fort Bend County should make it easy to provide additional minority opportunity in Houston.”

Further, the judges said, evidence “despite the act that minorities were responsible for the growth in the area, and new district (CD36) was placed partly in Harris County, no new minority district was drawn in the Houston area.”

However, the judges said the plaintiffs failed “to prove intentional vote dilution in the Houston area.”

In dissent, U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith said, “This case is really about only whether the congressional lines in the challenged districts were drawn for racial or partisan purposes. That is complicated, and the two considerations often overlap.”

With the exception of the Dallas/Fort Worth area, he agreed with the state’s “assertion that the plaintiffs and the United States have utterly failed to prove that the 2011 Texas Legislature enacted (the challenged plans) for the purpose of diluting minority voting strength rather than protecting incumbents and preserving Republican political strength won in the 2010 elections.”

In his view, “Texas redistricting in 2011 was essentially about politics, not race.”