AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Division of Justice sued Texas over new redistricting maps Monday, saying the plans discriminate towards voters within the state’s booming Latino and Black populations.
The lawsuit, filed within the Western District of Texas, claims the state violates a part of the Voting Rights Act. It’s the first submitting difficult a state’s maps from the Biden Justice Division throughout this redistricting cycle. Authorized consultants anticipate a blizzard of litigation as states redraw their legislative strains.
The lawsuit notes that the overwhelming majority of Texas’ inhabitants development over the previous decade got here from Black, Latino and Asian individuals, however the brand new maps that state Republicans drew doesn’t give any of those communities new alternatives to decide on their very own representatives.
WATCH: Division of Justice sues Texas over new redistricting maps
As a substitute, the maps pack Black and Latino communities into bizarre-shaped districts — a Dallas-area one is known as a “seahorse” form — whereas preserving secure seats for white Republicans.
“This isn’t the primary time that Texas has acted to attenuate the voting rights of its minority residents,” Affiliate Lawyer Normal Vanita Gupta stated throughout a press convention asserting the lawsuit. “Decade after decade, courts have discovered that Texas has enacted redistricting plans that intentionally dilute the voting energy of Latino and Black voters and that violate the Voting Rights Act.”
The lawsuit cites a number of congressional districts the place Republicans drew tortured strains to decrease the share of Black and Latino voters of their occasion’s congressional districts.
In west Texas’ aggressive twenty third district, the map trimmed out areas close to El Paso and San Antonio to decrease the share of Latino voting-age residents by 9%. Within the Dallas space it pulled Black and Latino residents of the northwest suburbs out of the district of Rep. Beth Van Duyne, who narrowly gained her reelection bid towards a Democratic Black Latina candidate final 12 months. Within the Houston space, the place the share of the white inhabitants is dwindling, the map stored six of 10 Home districts as white-majority or plurality districts.
Texas has needed to defend their maps in courtroom after each redistricting course of because the Voting Rights Act took impact in 1965, however this would be the first since a U.S. Supreme Courtroom ruling stated Texas and different states with a historical past of racial discrimination not must have the Justice Division scrutinize the maps earlier than they’re accredited.