The lawsuit, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) v. Abbott, directly challenges the Republican-drawn maps used to sort voters during state and federal elections in 2022 and 2024. The case is made up of a consolidated set of lawsuits that were all brought against the map drawings, which were approved by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in 2021. The Texas NAACP, the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, individual Texans and other groups are named plaintiffs.
Wednesday is the expected start of a four-week-long trial that will be seen by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.
Political maps are redrawn every 10 years after new census data is released. Because of Texas’s rapid population growth in the years before the maps were drawn, two new U.S. House seats were included in the redistricting, which was the biggest gain of any state during the reapportionment. But while racial minorities made up the majority of that population growth, advocates flagged the maps for consolidating white, conservative power across the state by splitting up high minority populations.
The civil and voting rights organizations that sued Texas argue that the districts are discriminatory towards minority voters, specifically Latino voters, who saw a reduction in the number of districts across the state where they make up the majority population of eligible voters.
“The current map packs Latino voters in both the Dallas-Fort Worth area and the Harris County area in such a way that it deprives those communities of equal representation that they are entitled to under the Voting Rights Act,” Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, told reporters Monday. “Texas has a long documented record of discrimination against Latino voters, but this case is about what's been happening now, not about ancient history.”
The National Redistricting Foundation is representing plaintiffs in the congressional map complaint. According to the Texas Tribune, the 2021 redistricting maps reduced the number of congressional districts with a Hispanic voting majority from eight to seven. In addition to calling for the 2021 maps to be thrown out, the National Redistricting Foundation is also asking for two new “Latino opportunity districts” to be created, one in the Dallas-Fort Worth region and one in Harris County, to accurately reflect Texas’s Latino population.
U.S. census data shows that at some point in 2022, Latinos surpassed non-Hispanic whites to make up the biggest share of the Texas population. But that large piece of the population pie isn’t reflected in the rooms where Texas’s lawmaking takes place. The state legislature continues to be overwhelmingly male and white, with Hispanic Texans claiming only 25% of Legislative seats, the Tribune reports. The same imbalance can be seen in the body representing Texas in Congress.
“When deprived of representation in Congress, a community doesn't have a say in Congress about the direction of this country. They do not have a voice to raise issues that Congress could address to help improve the lives of citizens in their community,” Jenkins said. “This case isn't just about the congressional map. It's about representation and living up to the fundamental ideal that should guide our democracy, that every individual has the right to exercise self-determination at the ballot box.”
The Plaintiffs That Have Dropped Out
Plaintiffs in the LULAC v. Abbott case are expected to begin taking the stand to testify against Texas’s gerrymandered districts next week, but some organizations once involved in the case will not be present.In December 2021, U.S. Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland announced that the Department of Justice had filed suit against Texas for violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits race-based discrimination in voting matters. Garland remarked that the maps were the first set drawn since the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision to eliminate a provision of the Voting Rights Act that required the Department of Justice to approve redistricting plans, a provision Garland called “the department’s best tool for protecting voting rights.”
“The complaint we filed today alleges that Texas has violated Section 2 by creating redistricting plans that deny or abridge the rights of Latino and Black voters to vote on account of their race, color or membership in a language minority group,” Garland said. “The department’s career voting law experts have assessed Texas’s new redistricting plans and determined that they include districts that violate the Voting Rights Act.”
In March of this year, though, the Department of Justice withdrew from the lawsuit. The decision to drop the case was the latest indication that President Donald Trump’s second administration would turn away from some of the voting rights initiatives started by President Joe Biden.
Several other groups, such as the Fair Maps Texas Action Committee, OCA-Greater Houston, the North Texas chapter of the Asian Pacific Islander Americans Public Affairs Association and Engage Texas have also dropped out of the suit.
“Unfortunately, this case has just taken so long that we've gone through two election cycles already where these voters are not being given equal representation that they deserve under the law,” Jenkins said.
