On December 6th, the Justice Department sued Texas over the state’s plan to redraw voting districts. The Justice Department argued that the new plan discriminates against Hispanics and other minorities while favoring white voters. The announcement was made by Attorney General Merrick Garland and marks the Biden administration’s first major legal action on redistricting. The department’s lawsuit is the third legal challenge to the newly drawn voting maps. Private plaintiffs such as former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. have also filed lawsuits.
The department’s main argument is that Texas’s plan violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act which states that voters cannot be denied equal access to the political process based on race and ethnicity. The lawsuit asks for the court to not only instruct lawmakers to create new maps that comply with federal law, but to also bar Texas from holding elections under the discriminatory districts. This suit is particularly important since it will establish standards for other states as they redraw their voting districts, a process that happens once a decade.
Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta posited that the state’s new maps were drawn in a rushed process with an “overall disregard” for the fact that Texas’s population growth has been driven primarily by Black and Hispanic residents. Texas’s population jumped by 4 million people from 2010 to 2020. An increase in minority residents accounted for 95% of that growth. Maria Teresa Kumar, president and chief of Voto Latino, has said that Texas stands to gain millions of dollars in federal funding due to the population boom. It is egregious to deny fair allocation of resources and political power to populations that have benefited Texas to such a large extent. The new voting districts are believed to dilute the increased minority strength that should have resulted from these demographic changes. Minority communities were excised from the core of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area Metroplex by being attached to heavily Anglo rural countries, some more than a hundred miles away. The lawsuit contended that proportional representation for Hispanic voters would be 11 Congressional seats and 45 Texas House seats. The new maps only provide seven Congressional seats and 29 Texas House seats.
The Justice Department’s suit is expected to face significant obstacles in court since the Voting Rights Act was partially gutted with the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) that rendered the Section 5 preclearance requirements for new election laws in counties with a history of voter discrimination inoperative. The burden lies on the Justice Department to prove that Texas maps violate federal law instead of Texas needing to demonstrate that the maps are legal. Another disadvantage the Justice Department will face is that the lawsuit was filed in El Paso since the 2013 Supreme Court Decision eliminated the ability to sue states under the Voting Rights Act in federal court in Washington D.C. Any appeal would need to go through the Fifth Circuit which is heavily conservative, making it unlikely for the court to rule in the department’s favor.
Even if the lawsuit succeeds, it is unlikely to change the new maps before the midterm elections next November. Midterm elections are pivotal in deciding which party controls Congress so it is particularly unfair that Hispanics and other minorities in Texas will have their voting power suppressed in such important elections.
Other states have been sued by the department for enacting similar discriminatory voting laws. Georgie was sued for laws limiting ballot access and private plaintiffs in Florida and Arizona were supported by the department in lawsuits against laws in those states. One of the largest problems about these lawsuits is that it takes a lengthy period of time before the courts decide whether the laws in question are constitutional. Therefore, new statutes could be in effect for multiple election cycles before states are forced to amend them.
References
Benner, K., Corasaniti, N., & Epstein, R. J. (2021). Justice Dept. files voting rights suit against Texas over new map. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/06/us/politics/texas-voting-rights-redistricting.html
Nakamura, D., & Barrett, D. (2021). Justice Dept. sues Texas over redistricting, citing discrimination against Latinos. The Washington Post.
Timm, J. (2021). Justice Department sues Texas over GOP-drawn voting maps. NBC News.