In their 10 page written response to the State of Texas in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, the Department of Justice today rejected Texas' redistricting plan as an unconstitutional violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Damning for the state according to the Justice lawyers:
Defendants deny that the proposed Congressional plan complies with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
As the Houston Chronicle noted:
The Justice Department filing is a response to a motion filed by the Texas seeking for court approval of its maps, a strategy observers have said is an attempt to circumvent the Department. In the filing, the Justice Department said that the proposed congressional map does not “maintain or increase the ability of minority voters to elect their candidate of choice.”
Texas is among the states required by the 1965 Voting Rights Act to obtain pre-clearance from the Justice Department on its redistricting plans. This provision applies to any state that had less than half its eligible voters voting in 1960 or 1964, and includes most of the southern states as well as Alaska, Arizona, and parts of Florida, California, Michigan, South Dakota, and New Hampshire.
Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and Gene Green, both Houston Democrats, have decried the redistricting plan as a violation of the act, particularly due to the lack of representation for Hispanics. Texas’ Hispanic population accounted for most of the five million person growth in total population since 2000, but opponents of the new plan charge that no new Hispanic-majority districts exist under the map.
The plan approved by the Republican legislature does not contain a single majority Hispanic district in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, despite the fact that the area has one of the largest Latino populations in the nation.
In other Texas redistricting news, today the DOJ also approved the Texas maps for redistricting the State Senate and the state Board of Education:
And DOJ's position on the SBOE and state Senate redistricting plan still doesn't grant Texas preclearance because the state chose to go through the court; it merely lays out the Justice Department's position in the ongoing litigation
And Friday afternoon
oral arguments for the redistricting trial in San Antonio concluded. No word on when the court may come to a decision, but the San Antonio panel is
expected to wait for the decision in Washington before ruling.
Update 1 (maps):
Redistricing plans enacted or passed by the 82nd Legislature, 2011:
- PlanC185 — Texas Congressional Districts
- PlanS148 — Texas Senate Districts
- PlanH283 — Texas House of Representatives Districts
- PlanE120 — Texas State Board of Education Districts