Latinos file complaint against “racist” redistribution cards in Texas

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A coalition of Latino organizations and individuals have filed a lawsuit against Texas state officials, challenging new redistribution cards approved by the state legislature this week that they say intentionally discriminate against Hispanic voters according to race and national origin.

The Texas Legislature on Monday approved new redistribution maps intended to shape the limits of US Congress and state votes for the next decade. But even as legislation setting out the new districts awaited Gov. Gregg Abbott’s signature to become law, the Latin American coalition filed a lawsuit this week, seeking a federal court ruling declaring the cards discriminatory and unconstitutional.

Four maps redrawing districts of the US Congress and districts of the Texas House of Representatives, State Senate and State Board of Education violate Hispanic civil rights by diluting their political strength, lawsuit says . They do so by “intentionally manipulating district boundaries to reduce Latino voting power and making inappropriate and excessive use of race in the redistribution,” the lawsuit reads.

“The redistribution plans discriminate against the Latino community by dividing the Latino community so that it cannot exercise its political force,” said Nina Perales, vice president of litigation for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represents Coalition. .

Perales said the merits of the lawsuit became “very clear” as he watched the disconnect between new 2020 census data that is supposed to inform the redistribution process and the maps drawn by the GOP majority legislature in Texas.

Texas is the only state in the country to win two seats in the United States Congress due to population growth. The strongest growth came from the Latino community, with an addition of 1.98 million people. In contrast, the white population only increased by 187,252 people, according to the US Census Bureau.

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THE 2020 CENSUS: By the Numbers: How the Hispanic population in Texas is changing

“Despite the fact that Latinos have grown by almost 2 million, there is no clear increase in the number of majority Latino districts in any of the state’s four redistribution maps,” Perales said.

Instead, she said, the two new congressional districts of Texas were lured in favor of white voters: one in the northwest suburbs of Houston and the other in Travis County, where the city of Austin is located.

Republicans said they did not take racial data into account when drawing the maps. “We drew these maps blindly,” said State Senator Joan Huffman, a Harris County Republican who chairs the Senate Special Committee on Redistribution.

THE LATIN VOTE: A Texan Story of Growth and Misconceptions

“When you have cards that deny people the right to vote to exercise their voting power, then we see it as a direct attack on our community,” said Cesar Espinosa, executive director of FIEL Houston, one of the organizations. nonprofits that make up the coalition that brought the lawsuit. .

The redistribution maps ignored Latinos in general, Espinosa said, as well as Hispanic immigrants who become citizens and integrate into society to participate in the political process and be represented.

“These cards are a broken promise for these citizens,” he said.

Analysts said the Texas redistribution maps were designed by Republicans, as the dominant party, to consolidate the political power they have held for decades in the state.

Gerrymandering has already led to long legal battles in Texas. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund succeeded in challenging the maps drawn by Republicans after the 2010 census, when a federal court found that Texas lawmakers discriminated against voters of color.

Experts say instead of making major changes to the map like in the past, Republicans have been surgical this time around.

This redistribution was not a partisan “binge eating”, said Jeronimo Cortina, professor of political science at the University of Houston. “It’s not the sharks that attack the prey.”

It was “surgical,” he said, adding that Republicans were strengthening their districts of influence where former President Donald Trump lost and solidified those where the GOP won to make them safer for the party to. the future.

The result may make those districts less competitive and possibly unattainable for Latinos and minority ridings, Cortina said.

Perales noted, however, that the new redistribution trial was not about political parties but “discrimination and racism”. She said racism existed in Texas before Republicans became the dominant party.

“These (new) cards protect the mandate of elected white officials, regardless of their political party,” she said.

Based on the growth of Texas’ population driven primarily by Latinos, Perales said, the redistribution could have created a second predominantly Hispanic district of opportunity in Houston. Now there is only one, the 29th, represented by the American representative Sylvia Garcia, a Democrat.

The redistribution also failed by failing to create a congressional seat for Latinos in Dallas-Fort Worth, Perales said.

The Voting Rights Act previously required Texas to obtain “prior approval” for electoral law changes due to the state’s history of discrimination, but the United States Supreme Court effectively struck down this requirement in a 2013 decision.

Democrats in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday sought to push forward a major overhaul of election laws targeting states like Texas, but their efforts were blocked by Republicans, with none agreeing to begin debate on the legislation.

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Editor-in-chief Benjamin Wermund contributed reporting from Washington, DC

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