Yet another lawsuit has been filed challenging the GOP-led redistricting process in Texas, where — predictably — Republican state leaders have set legislative district lines in motion that favor their side while leaving marginalized communities with only more of an apparent struggle in certain situations to substantively impact election outcomes.
This is important.
I’ve also got a solution to stop gerrymandering: We pass the Freedom to Vote Act. https://t.co/5bjlUGxaZk
— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) December 7, 2021
Around the state as a whole, Republican officials enacted Congressional lines that hand two new U.S. House districts to white majorities, despite the fact that non-white voters are responsible for the overwhelming majority of the population growth that meant Texas obtained those districts at all. State leaders also decreased the number of U.S. House districts with a Hispanic majority by one, and they took the same move against the state’s Black residents — leaving Texas set to have zero U.S. House districts with a Black majority, although Black residents comprise just about 13 percent of the state’s population.
Voters should get to pick their representatives instead of representatives picking their voters.
End Partisan Gerrymandering.— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) December 13, 2021
This new lawsuit, which was filed by Texas state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer (D), targets the drawing of the state’s 35th Congressional District. As the lawsuit puts it, the new map allegedly “does not afford the plaintiff and other Latino voters in central Texas an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” This situation, the case says, violates the 14th Amendment because of the discrimination against voters of a certain racial and national background. Overall, the case also “alleges that Texas’ new congressional map violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act because it dilutes minority voting strength, specifically that of Latino voters, across the state,” as the voting rights organization Democracy Docket explains.
ICYMI: An 8th lawsuit was filed in federal court yesterday challenging Texas' redistricting maps. The complaint argues that the 35th Congressional District was redrawn to dilute Latino voting strength, in violation of the 14th Amendment & the VRA. https://t.co/yBBj9m836q
— Democracy Docket (@DemocracyDocket) December 14, 2021
These are serious problems. If a given community is pushed out of the majority in as many districts as possible — no matter their overall numbers, then that community would suddenly find it more difficult to see the election of representatives that connect to their interests. It’s an issue that has repeatedly emerged in states where Republicans have led the redistricting process. In Alabama, the state enacted U.S. House district lines putting Black residents in the majority in just one district out of seven, even though they make up over one-fourth of the state’s overall population. In Ohio, state authorities put certain suburbs of the city of Cincinnati in another Congressional district from the city itself — and predictably, that other district is largely white (and Republican), in contrast to the sizable Black population in those suburbs.
It’s about time patriots focus on the anti-democratic efforts of some GOP-controlled states to eradicate the right to vote. It’s not just extreme voter suppression and gerrymandering to allow for minority control. It is laying the groundwork for a future coup. We must rise up.
— Daniel Goldman (@danielsgoldman) December 12, 2021