The Brief
A lawsuit has been filed challenging Texas's newly-passed redistricting map.
Plaintiffs allege the map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander that dilutes minority voting power.
The suit asks a federal court to declare the map illegal and block its use in future elections.
AUSTIN - Just hours after the Texas Senate passed redrawn congressional maps, they have already been challenged in federal court.
In new court filings, a group known as the "Gonzales Plaintiffs" are challenging the map as part of their ongoing lawsuit challenging the map approved following the 2020 census.
The new map has not been signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott, though he indicated Saturday morning that he was ready to sign House Bill 4.
The filing challenges the map on four different fronts.
Intentional vote dilution
The group argues that the new maps consist of intentional discrimination.
"House Bill 4 obliterates longstanding majority-minority districts in key areas of the state, while creating other "sham" majority-minority districts," the filing reads. "The end result is that House Bill 4 increases the number of districts in which Anglo voters are a majority of eligible voters, and reduces the number of districts in which Black and Latino voters are able to elect their candidates of choice."
The filing claims the map was drawn with the "express goal" of diluting minority voting and "systematically dismantling" current majority-minority districts.
Unconstitutional racial gerrymandering
The filing claims that the new map was drawn with race as the primary criterion for the new districts.
The filing points to districts in Dallas where the Black voting population was lowered from a plurality to a bare majority.
"And the remaining predominantly Black precincts in parts of Tarrant County that are not contiguous with CD 30 are captured, with great precision, by an unsightly appendage of CD 25, a mostly rural, majority-Anglo district extending as far west as Callahan County," court documents state.
Violations of the Voting Rights Act
The lawsuit claims violations of section 2 of the VRA, saying the redrawing fails to properly represent Latino-voter districts in the DFW, Harris County, Bexar County and Rio Grande Valley areas.
According to the filing, the new maps scatter Latino voters across multiple districts to ensure that their "preferred candidates will be consistently defeated by Anglo Texans voting as a bloc for other candidates."
Mid-decade malapportionment
According to the documents, the entire mid-decade redrawing, even aside from the individual complaints with districts, is unlawful due to creating new districts that are malapportioned based on their current populations.
The filing says the proposal takes racial information and partisan politics into account without legitimate justification.
Because of this, the plaintiffs say the effort is weaponized.
The requests
Gonzales Plaintiffs are asking the court for four provisions in response to what they claim is an illegal attempt by the state:
Declare HB 4 unconstitutional and a violation of the Voting Rights Act.
Prevent Texas from holding future elections using the new map.
Order the use of a valid, new congressional redistricting plan.
Award them attorneys' fees and other appropriate relief.
Texas redistricting effort
Dig deeper
The new map increases the number of congressional districts that would have voted for Trump by at least 10 percentage points by five.
Republicans currently control 25 of the state's 38 Congressional districts.
The Democrats claim the redrawn maps will violate the federal Voting Rights Act, but that may be difficult for them to prove.
For two weeks, Texas Democrats blocked any legislation from reaching Gov. Abbott's desk.
They left the state in protest of a vote on a new congressional redistricting map that would give republicans five new seats in congress.
What's next
The court has yet to make a decision on the request.
The Source
Information in this report comes from a public filing in a federal court as well as previous FOX coverage.
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