Texas
Civil rights groups sue Texas county over alleged ‘discriminatory’ map
The brand new lawsuit — introduced by the Texas Civil Rights Challenge and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice on behalf of native branches of the NAACP and the Galveston League of United Latin American Residents Council 151 — alleges that the brand new map diminishes the voting energy of Black and Hispanic voters by splitting up the one majority-minority precinct.
The brand new map endangers the reelection of Stephen Holmes, the county’s solely Black commissioner, who has served on the board for 22 years. Holmes is subsequent on the poll in 2024.
The lawsuit alleges the Republicans majority pushed by a “racially discriminatory map” that “largely passed off behind closed doorways.”
Sarah Chen, an legal professional with the Texas Civil Rights Challenge, known as the map — and the method utilized by the Republican majority within the county to approve it — “egregious examples of individuals in energy … exercising that energy to dilute the votes of racial minorities.”
CNN has reached out to Galveston officers for remark.
Each this lawsuit and the criticism by the Justice Division underscore the tough authorized terrain that voting rights advocates now face in difficult alleged discriminatory maps. This cycle marks the primary spherical of redistricting for the reason that US Supreme Court docket in 2013 gutted the so-called preclearance provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
That provision required states with a historical past of discrimination to first acquire the permission of the federal authorities or the courts earlier than enacting new legal guidelines associated to voting.
With these powers gone, the Justice Division’s lawsuit depends largely on one other part of the federal voting rights legislation, Part 2, which places the burden on the federal authorities to show its case.
The lawsuit filed Thursday cites Part 2, but in addition argues that map violates the constitutional rights of Black and Latino voters to equal safety of the legislation.
Chen mentioned civil rights teams are in search of “totally different pathways” in voting rights instances “as a result of victory isn’t assured.”
This isn’t the primary struggle over the contours of Holmes’ precinct.
A decade in the past, when preclearance was nonetheless in impact, the Justice Division rejected an effort to redraw the county’s electoral precincts, on the grounds that they diluted minority energy.
The lawsuit filed by the native civil rights teams and the DOJ each element steps they are saying Republican officers took to restrict participation by Holmes and Galveston-area residents as they redrew the precincts.
Individuals, the DOJ mentioned, struggled to even hear the proceedings as a result of the room had no microphones or sound system.
The map was authorised 3-1, with Holmes as the only “no” vote.