The United States District Court for the District of Columbia has denied Texas motion for summary judgment on the Republican-drawn maps for U.S. House of Representatives, State Senate and State House.
The order reads in part:
Having carefully considered the entire record and the parties’ arguments, the Court finds and concludes that the State of Texas used an improper standard or methodology to determine which districts afford minority voters the ability to elect their preferred candidates of choice and that there are material issues of fact in dispute that prevent this Court from entering declaratory judgment that the three redistricting plans meet the requirements of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. See 42 U.S.C. 1973c.
Texas Democratic Party Chairman, Boyd Richie, issued the following statement:
Rick Perry’s Republican Party used every dirty trick they could think of to keep voters from deciding elections. After laying-off tens of thousands of teachers, I can understand why Republicans don’t want to face voters. Thankfully the courts are not going to let them disenfranchise millions of Texans with these illegal maps.
Republicans drew blatantly illegal maps then tried to game the system by going through the courts rather than the Department of Justice. Yet even the courts threw their dirty maps out the window. The courts said what we’ve been saying all along. These illegal maps trample on the voting rights of Texans and don’t allow voters to elect their candidates of choice.
The real losers in this process are the voters. Texas voters are seeing Republican discrimination and obstructionism at all levels but don’t know which Republicans they’ll have a chance to vote against this election cycle.
This entire process could have been avoided if Republicans would have drawn maps based on demographics rather than their own shallow political ambitions.
The ruling from the panel of three federal judges — two were appointed by then-President George W. Bush and one was appointed by President Barack Obama — means that there will be a full trial in Washington to determine if the state’s redistricting plan reduces opportunity for minority representation.
All three judges signed the order denying the state’s request for a ruling on the state’s redistricting maps without a trial. No trial date has been set in Washington.
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The maps passed by the Texas legislature are not allowed to legally exist unless they are approved by the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Right Division or the D.C. district court, a legal requirement imposed by the Voting Rights Act to ensure that states with a history of segregation do not reduce opportunity for minority representation.
Source of Boyd Richie’s statement: Texas Democratic Party
