(Washington Insider Magazine) -Believing that the state’s plans for redistricting would put minority voters at a stated disadvantage, the Justice Department has sued Texas. Filed in Texas’ Western District, the lawsuit claims that the state’s plans for redistricting are in direct violation of the second section of the Voting Rights Act.
At a news conference addressing the lawsuit, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said that the new plans will “deny Black and Latino voters an equal opportunity in the voting process and to elect representatives of their choice…[we allege] that several of those districts were drawn with discriminatory intent.”
The Department of Justice has called out several districts by name in the lawsuit. The voting population of Texas’ 23rd District is 50% Latino, but the lawsuit claims that Republican district-makers have “swapped out” regularly-voting Latino populations with low-voting Latino populations, a move that would theoretically work to lessen their representation.
In the 24th District, the new voting map has lowered the Latino voting-age population from 40% to 23%. The state has also been accused of using the political affordance of voting districts to pair urban, minority communities with rural, White communities that live up to 100 miles away.
This is not the first time that Texas has been accused of similar acts. Earlier this year, the state’s Republican party came under fire for drawing allegedly discriminatory voting disctricts that split populations of color into smaller groups, leading to less congressional representation for them. Known as gerrymandering, the practice is nothing new. Elected officials have been drawing voting districts with party intention for years.
This is the fourth lawsuit that the Justice Department has filed against Texas since President Joe Biden took office. The state has actually been under a lot of political fire this year: their immigration enforcement policies, new voting law, and new abortion law have all been consistent sources of political conflict for the state.
Of course, the Justice Department’s claims have not gone unchallenged. Texas’ Attorney General Ken Paxton has called the lawsuit yet another one of Biden’s “ploy[s] to control” voters in Texas. Believing that the lawsuit is an attempt to “sway democracy,” Paxton is confident that the new districts will be considered wholly lawful, and that voting will go on as usual in Texas.
Although this would not be the first time something like this has happened in the United States, it will be up to the courts to decide the fate of the lawsuit, and perhaps even decide Texas’ political future.
