Justice Department sues to block gerrymandered Texas congressional map
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the enforcement action on Monday under Section 2 of the landmark Voting Rights Act.
Congressional District 33, represented by Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, under the redistricting plan approved by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Greg Abbott on Oct. 25, 2021. The twisting district that doubles back on itself is one of the most contorted on a map the U.S. Justice Department calls illegal under the Voting Rights Act.(Plan2193 / Texas Legislature)
By Todd J. Gillman
12:40 PM on Dec 6, 2021 CST — Updated at 6:48 PM on Dec 6, 2021 CST
Update: Updated at 6:45 p.m. with comment from Abbott aide.
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration sued Texas on Monday to block its new congressional map, accusing the state of gerrymandering to shut out nonwhite people in violation of federal voting rights law.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the enforcement action at Justice Department headquarters, saying the redistricting plans Texas adopted in recent months "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."
"Discriminatory redistricting schemes are illegal," he said.
A federal court will weigh whether to halt the use of these maps for Texas' 2022 elections. Blocking the maps could inject chaos into the March 1 primaries. Candidates have been filing since Nov. 13, with a deadline next Monday at 6 p.m. Federal courts have ordered tweaks after previous rounds of redistricting, which can prompt delays or at least compress the time for campaigning once the dust settles.
Texas gained two U.S. House seats after the 2020 Census, more than any other state. And both were drawn with white voting majorities, even though the white share of Texas' population slipped in the past decade, and white people accounted for just 4.7% of growth.
The GOP-controlled Legislature set aside 14 of the 38 seats for Democrats — a scant 37% in a state where Donald Trump topped Joe Biden by less than 6 points.
The courts tolerate political gerrymandering. They do not sanction racial discrimination.
Statewide, the number of U.S. House districts with a Hispanic voter majority dropped from eight to seven in the new map, even though Hispanic people accounted for nearly half of the 4 million new Texans in the last decade.
White voters outnumber everyone else in 23 of the 38 newly drawn U.S. House districts, up from 22 for the past decade — even though white people accounted for just 4.7% of growth.
"Decade after decade, courts have found that Texas has enacted redistricting plans that deliberately dilute the voting strength of Latino and Black voters and that violate the Voting Rights Act," said Vanita Gupta, associate attorney general. "The Justice Department will not stand idly by in the face of unlawful attempts to restrict access to the ballot," Gupta said.
The Justice Department's 45-page complaint filed in El Paso largely echoes allegations leveled for months by Democrats and minority advocates: Nonwhite people fueled 95% of the Texas' unmatched growth since 2010, but white Republicans used their control of state government to gobble up the bounty and craft election districts intended to keep them in power.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called the lawsuit an effort to "sway democracy."
"The Department of Justice's absurd lawsuit against our state is the Biden administration's latest ploy to control Texas voters," he said in a written statement. "I am confident that our Legislature's redistricting decisions will be proven lawful, and this preposterous attempt to sway democracy will fail."
Gov. Greg Abbott signed the maps Oct. 25 after a bitter spring and summer.
"Texas added two million Latinos" yet Texas Republicans "found a way to gerrymander and avoid adding districts that represent this growth," said Maria Teresa Kumar, CEO of Voto Latino, one of the groups trying to block the maps in court. The federal action shows that can't be done with impunity, she added. "The Texas GOP's efforts silence Latino voices through diminishing the power of their voting, packing and dividing them into convoluted district lines that lessen their representation."
Attorney General Merrick Garland announces a Justice Department lawsuit Dec. 6, 2021, accusing Texas of illegal gerrymandering in its congressional map. Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta joined him in asserting that Texas' map violates the Voting Rights Act.(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)
Abbott spokeswoman Renae Eze said "it's no surprise that Democrats in Washington are attacking our state's redistricting plans." State leaders are working "to ensure Texans are represented fairly" and the governor's office is confident that courts will uphold the redistricting plans, she said.
Democrats in the Texas House staged an eleventh hour walkout in May to block voter restrictions. In July, most decamped to Washington for weeks, using the prolonged quorum break to pressure Congress to reimpose federal oversight that would also make racial gerrymandering much harder.
During a third special session Abbott convened, lawmakers finalized maps through an "extraordinarily rapid and opaque legislative process," the Justice Department asserted in its complaint.
The Legislature "surgically excised minority communities from the core of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex (DFW) by attaching them to heavily Anglo rural counties, some more than a hundred miles away, placing them in a congressional district where they would lack equal electoral opportunity," the complaint noted.
The Dallas-Fort Worth area got no additional representation, despite leading the state in growth.
It remains the country's largest region without a Hispanic-majority district, despite a Hispanic population of 1.7 million — enough to fill two congressional districts.
The current map has one district with a Black voter majority. The new map has none, even though Black growth accounted for 16.4% of the statewide population surge.
The Biden administration is also challenging Texas' state House map. In that plan, the number of majority-white districts grows from 83 to 89. That's 60% in a state where the white population is 40% and falling.
The number of majority-Hispanic state House districts drops from 33 to 30, and the number of Black-majority districts drops from seven to six.
The Justice Department noted that since 1970, not one decennial Census and redistricting cycle has passed without federal courts finding at least one Texas-wide redistricting plan in violation of the U.S. Constitution or the Voting Rights Act.
"This is the third time in three decades where Texas has eliminated a Latino electoral opportunity in this same district, despite previous court determinations that this violates the law," said Gupta.
She was referring to the vast 23d Congressional District that spans 800 miles of border and runs from El Paso to San Antonio — one of many districts where the Legislature beefed up Republican control.
Last decade it went back and forth between the parties. The remap pushed the Hispanic voter population from 63.2% to 57.8%. In theory, Hispanic residents still control the district. But bloc voting by San Antonio-area white residents makes this safe turf now for freshman GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales, the Justice Department said.
I'm certain Texas will prevail! #redistricting https://t.co/G2FBrAyiLj
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) December 6, 2021
Garland asserted the map would not have passed muster if Texas still had to obtain preclearance from the Justice Department for any changes that could impact voters' rights, including new districts or requirements for absentee ballots and voter ID, or moving a polling site.
Preclearance ended for Texas and other states with a history of discrimination in 2013, when the Supreme Court defanged the landmark Voting Rights Act. The court scrapped as outdated the formula used to decide which jurisdictions deserved such scrutiny.
Republicans have stymied efforts to restore that oversight, leaving little recourse when rights are allegedly trampled.
Without preclearance, voters, advocacy groups and the Justice Department can sue only after new rules and maps take effect. Courts can take years to resolve such challenges.
Democrats in Texas and other states dominated by Republicans that have passed restrictive elections bills have clamored for help from Congress to safeguard voting rights. Democrats have so far been unable to get past GOP objections.
Garland urged Congress to resurrect his department's preclearance authority, expressing frustration at the federal government's impotence even in the face of an egregious gerrymander.
"Were that preclearance tool still in place, we would likely not be here today," he said.
GOP lawmakers who crafted the map were careful to rely on partisan data instead of racial data, though, noted Bob Stein, a Rice University political scientist, and that may inoculate the map against the Voting Rights Act claims.
Related: Texas House finalizes gnarled U.S. House map that gives GOP bounty from decade of Hispanic growth
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund has argued that all four plans — for U.S. House, state House and Senate, and State Board of Education — dilute the voting strength of Hispanic people in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
A three-judge panel in El Paso combined a half-dozen redistricting lawsuits filed since mid-October by civil rights groups and individual voters.
On Dec. 3 the judges — two Republicans, appointed by Ronald Reagan and Trump, and one Democrat named by Barack Obama — rejected Texas' request to toss the suits.
The state's lawyers had argued that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which allows for legal challenges, does not let advocacy groups file on behalf of individual voters.
The Justice Department does have standing under Section 2 and it invoked that provision in Monday's challenge.
Related: 3 takeaways from the 2021 redistricting process that featured Texas Republicans protecting power
Democrats in the Texas House took the federal lawsuit as a vindication of their own futile efforts to stymie the remap.
"As House Democrats argued throughout the legislative process, Texas' population growth — 95% of which was in communities of color — demands that the Legislature draw maps that give Black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters more, not fewer, opportunities to elect the candidates of their choice," said state Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie, chair of the House Democrats.
Beto O'Rourke, a former Democratic congressman from El Paso who hopes to topple Abbott next year, also embraced the federal intervention.
This is what happens when those in power aren't interested in serving the people they're supposed to represent.
Texas leaders would rather gerrymander election maps and hand pick their own voters than earn their place in power by listening and responding to the needs of Texans. https://t.co/UpKraoSgnR
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) December 6, 2021
"This is what happens when those in power aren't interested in serving the people they're supposed to represent. Texas leaders would rather gerrymander election maps and hand pick their own voters than earn their place in power by listening and responding to the needs of Texans," he tweeted.
Conservative groups slammed the Biden administration.
"You cannot take the politics out of politics. But now that Republicans are getting good at redistricting and beating Democrats at their own game, Democrats are getting upset and want to drastically overhaul and federalize a process that has been left up to the state legislatures since the nation's founding," said Adam Brandon, president of FreedomWorks.
Drawing election districts is done at the state level, though Texas was covered by Justice Department oversight for 38 years until the 2013 Supreme Court ruling.
Texas Democratic Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said the lawsuit shows the need for federal protection from "racist gerrymandering, because the Texas GOP has a long history of trying to illegally shut down the votes and voices of people of color in order to cling to power. ... We need laws to prevent this kind of blatant discrimination — not just clean up the mess."
Austin bureau chief Robert T. Garrett, Austin correspondent Sami Sparber and Washington correspondent Emily Caldwell contributed to this report.
Related: Texas' latest congressional gerrymander wouldn't pass muster under doomed Freedom to Vote Act
Todd J. Gillman. Todd became Washington Bureau Chief in 2009 and has covered East Texas, Dallas City Hall and politics since joining The News in 1989. He's been elected three times to the White House Correspondents' Association board, with a term ending in 2023. Todd has a Master in Public Policy from Harvard and a BA from Johns Hopkins in international studies.
tgillman@dallasnews.com @toddgillman
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