Justice Department files lawsuit saying Texas' redistricting plan that discriminates against voters of color

SCREEN CAPTURE / MSNBC

Deputy Attorney General Vanita Gupta announces the DOJ lawsuit vs. Texas redistricting plan.

Texas' plan for redrawing Congressional district boundaries is being challenged by the Department of Justice in a lawsuit filed Monday that claims minority voters will be denied equal opportunity to seek representation in political offices.

"Texas’ 2021 redistricting plans were enacted through a rushed process, with minimal opportunity for public comment, without any expert testimony, and with an overall disregard for the massive minority population growth in Texas over the last decade," said U.S. Deputy Attorney General Vanita Gupta in a press conference.

Texas’ population grew by 4 million people from 2010 to 2020, and 95% of that growth came from minority populations. As a result of the population growth, the state gained two new Congressional seats, both of which were designed to give White voters a majority," said Gupta, one of the highest ranking Indian Americans in the Biden administration.

"Despite this significant increase in the number and proportion of eligible Latino and Black voters in Texas, the newly enacted redistricting plans will not allow minority voters an equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice," said Gupta. "Instead, our investigation determined that Texas’ redistricting plans will dilute the increased minority voting strength that should have developed from these significant demographic shifts."

The complaint asks the court to prohibit Texas from conducting elections under the challenged plans and asks the court to order Texas to devise and implement new redistricting plans that comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The complaint also asks the court to establish interim plans before the 2022 Midterm elections pending a lawful state redistricting, a process that could extend beyond the Midterms.

The DOJ suit is the second legal challenge to Texas attempt to minimize the impact of voters of color. The Fair Maps Texas Action Committee filed a legal challenge on behalf of a coalition of voting and civil-rights groups and individual voters, including the Asian American Legal and Education Fund (AALDEF).

The AANHPI population is the fastest-growing racial or ethnic voting group in the state, according to the Census. Over the past decade, AANHPI voters have increased from 950,000 in 2010 to nearly 1.6 million in 2020.

“Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) are the fastest growing racial group in America and especially in Texas. Together with their Black and Latino neighbors, AAPIs have already demonstrated that they vote together. It is clear that these new legislative district lines were drawn to intentionally divide these rapidly growing AAPI communities and prevent them and other communities of color from electing candidates of their choice. This continues Texas' shameful history of discriminating against voters of color,” Jerry Vattamala, Director of the Democracy Program with AALDEF.

Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, Texas has not gone a single decade without a federal court finding that the state had violated federal protections for voters of color. 

In 2021, Texas lawmakers’ voting plans for State House districts (H2316), State Senate districts (S2168), and Congressional districts (C2193), repeat the Legislature's past mistakes. The complaint alleges that each plan discriminates against voters of color by failing to create coalition districts mandated by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, intentionally dividing voters of color into several districts, and otherwise diluting the voting power of people of color. 

As the DOJ complaint documents, in areas like Fort Bend County, a diverse region near Houston, Texas, AAPI communities are cracked “with almost surgical precision,” depriving them of an equal opportunity to elect their candidates of choice.

In Congressional District 22 where a growing and active AAPI electorate lives in suburban Houston, an Indian American candidate, Sri Preston Kulkarni, almost defeated the Republican incumbent. Under the new map, the AAPI neighborhoods have been divided up into several districts or added to larger rural districts where White voters are the majority.

“These lines are essentially silencing” minority voters, Vattamala asserted.

“Surgically removing these communities and adding them with White, rural counties to essentially dilute their vote.”

“This brazen attack on the voting rights of people of color in Texas is a fundamental attack on democracy and violates the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution," said AALDEF's Vattamala. "All Texans should be appalled at these blatantly discriminatory district lines.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AAPI perspective, follow me on Twitter @DioknoEd.