As soon as we captured Senate District 10 in 2008 with the candidacy of Wendy Davis, the Republican-dominatedlegislature set a course to cut out the minority precincts which supported and boostedDavis, a Democrat, into office. The Texas legislature’s redistricting planredrew the boundaries for Congress and the state House and Senate districts, atour exclusion and without our input, and in contradiction to the Voting Rights Act.
Wendy Davis took Texas tocourt over Senate District 10, while at the same time Marc Veasey took thestate to court over defining the boundaries of the new Congressional District33. The case was heard first in the federal court in the Western District of Texas.
Texas Attorney General GregAbbott defended the redistricting plan, and also put forth the same plan before a three-judgepanel in Washington, D.C., in order to gain “preclearance” approval.
As it turned out, the federalcourt in Texas threw out the Texas legislature’s redistricting map, and drew upa new map. Attorney General Abbott and Governor Rick Perry immediately appealedto the U.S. Supreme Court. But the High Court refused to endorse Texas' plan, but claimed that the lower court had overstepped itsbounds. The case was sent back to the federal court in Texas, wherethe redistricting map boundaries would again undergo the slow process of being redrawn.
In the process, and as theRepublican primary season in Texas lingered unsettled pending litigation, acompromise between parties was reached. Wendy Davis was awarded her original senate districtback, and Congressional District 33 would be drawn as a minority-majoritydistrict.
NOW, the verdict is in onthe other case, where Texas’s attempted and end-run around the Obama Justice Department to gain preclearance through the D.C. court.
[Excerpts from “Texas loses gamble on redistricting”]
The gamble by Texas AttorneyGeneral Greg Abbott and Republican lawmakers to bypass the Obama JusticeDepartment with redistricting maps backfired big time when a federal court onTuesday rejected all the plans, even one that U.S. officials hadn't found objectionable.
The three-judge panel, whichheld a trial in January, concluded that the Republican-dominated Legislature'sredrawing of districts for Congress and the state House and Senate did notcomply with the federal Voting Rights Act.
What's more, the court saidlawmakers acted with discriminatory intent in crafting boundaries forcongressional districts and Fort Worth's SenateDistrict 10, represented by Democrat Wendy Davis.
Even though the JusticeDepartment had not objected to the Texas Senate map, the court was persuaded byarguments from Davis and others that SD 10 was improperly reconfigured in a waythat "cracked" African-American and Hispanic voters who had coalescedto elect her in 2008.
“That Texas did not, and nowfails to respond sufficiently to the parties' evidence of discriminatoryintent, compels us to conclude that the Senate Plan was enacted withdiscriminatory purpose as to SD 10,” wrote Judge Thomas Griffith, U.S. Court ofAppeals in Washington, D.C.
The court cited severalfactors pointing to discriminatory purpose in developing the congressional map:The Legislature “removed the economic guts” from the three districtsrepresented by African Americans, while “no such surgery was performed on thedistricts of Anglo incumbents”.
FOOTNOTE:
Abbott tweeted that he wouldappeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, and he issued a statement saying theappellate judges' decision "extends the Voting Rights Act beyond thelimits intended by Congress and beyond the boundaries imposed by theConstitution."
COMMENTARY:
This is the question thatTexas wants to present before the High Court: The Constitutionality of the VotingRights Acts, as currently administered and enforced. In its fight for state’s rights sovereignty, Texas does not want to be compelled to pre-clear electoralchanges through the federal Department of Justice.
In the previous Supreme Court’s rulingin (Governor Rick) Perry v. (StateSenator Wendy) Davis, some members of theCourt hinted at taking on the 1965 Voting Rights Act, as if sections of the oldCivil Rights law may have outlived its purpose, because the era of racial discrimination is over.
It might be noted that otherstates are also taking aim at the Act on the same grounds, and the Republican Party itself isadvocating the law's complete abolition. But the gerrymandering of SD 10 is proof, inand of itself, of the need for continued federal Civil Rights protection for minority voting districts.
Without such protection, itwould be legal for a Texas GOP-dominated legislature to remove “the economicguts from the three districts represented by African Americans, while no suchsurgery (would be) performed on the districts of Anglo incumbents”, as statedby the U.S. Appeal Court.
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