The Justice Department on Thursday sued Galveston County in Texas over a redistricting plan that allegedly discriminates against Black and Hispanic voters.
Justice Department lawyers accused officials in the GOP-dominated southeastern Texas county of deliberately making “drastic changes” to district lines to eliminate the sole district in which the county’s Black and Hispanic voters had an equal opportunity to elect preferred candidates of choice.
According to a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, the redistricting plan approved in November for the county’s governing body known as the Commissioners Court was “adopted, in part, for a discriminatory purpose” that violates the 1965 Voting Rights Act’s provisions against discriminatory voting practices or procedures.
“The 2021 commissioners court redistricting plan will result in denying or abridging the right of Black and Hispanic voters in Galveston County to participate equally in the political process,” the Justice Department said in its lawsuit, which as first reported by CNN.
Galveston County Communications Director Zach Davidson declined to comment on the allegations in the lawsuit, citing pending litigation.
The redistricting effort has “both the result and intent of diluting the voting strength of the County’s minority voters,” the lawsuit goes on to say.
Census data from 2020 shows the county, situated on the Gulf Coast, has a voting-age population that is roughly 58 percent white, 22.5 percent Hispanic and 12.5 percent Black.
The Justice Department is asking the court to block Galveston County from using the challenged plan to conduct elections. It also calls on the court to order Galveston County to devise and put in place a new redistricting plan.
The lawsuit marks the third time under the Biden administration that the Justice Department has filed a lawsuit in Texas over voting practices. Federal prosecutors also sued Georgia, its secretary of State and state election board in June over voting procedures.
Dec. 7, 202102:05
“This action is the latest demonstration of the Justice Department’s commitment to protecting the voting rights of all Americans, particularly during the current redistricting cycle,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement. “We will continue to use all available tools to challenge voting discrimination in our country.”
The legal battle over the redistricting map is the latest in the first redistricting cycle since the Supreme Court in 2013 effectively invalidated a major part of the Voting Rights Act that laid out a formula for which states needed clearance from the Justice Department or a federal court in Washington before they could make changes to voting procedures or redraw electoral districts.
The complaint targeting Galveston County alleges that the adopted redistricting map moved a voting precinct that had the highest Black voting-age population in the county out of the majority-minority district where it had been located for 20 years and split it between two other commissioners court precincts.
The Commissioners Court, which consists of a county judge, who serves as the presiding officer, and four commissioners elected from single member districts, also deliberately excluded the only Black commissioner, Democrat Stephen Holmes, from being “meaningfully involved” in the drawing of the 2021 plan, the lawsuit states.
The county has a lengthy record of trying to eliminate electoral opportunities for the county’s Black and Hispanic voters and adopting discriminatory redistricting plans, according to the lawsuit. The Justice Department twice rejected the county’s redistricting plans — in 1992 and 2012 — due to concerns about violating the Voting Rights Act.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
