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What happened?
The U.S. Justice Department withdrew from a lawsuit alleging that Texas’ legislative and congressional district maps drawn after the 2020 U.S. census discriminated against Latino and Black voters by denying them an equal opportunity to participate in the electoral process.
The department made the decision last week, according to court filings.
It’s the latest in a series of moves by the Justice Department under President Donald Trump to retreat from voting rights cases initiated by the Biden administration. In January, the department withdrew from a voting rights case it had brought last year against Virginia over the removal of names from voter rolls, and last month it withdrew a request to participate in a redistricting case in Louisiana.
What’s the dispute?
The case involves Texas’ 2021 redrawing of political maps for congressional and state legislative districts after the 2020 census. The updated maps were meant to reflect the state’s population growth, which, according to the census, was driven almost entirely by Texans of color. However, the Republican-drawn maps diluted their political power, splitting up areas that had high minority populations and giving white voters even greater control. That sparked complaints from the federal government and other groups that the maps discriminated against voters of color.
Republican lawmakers and attorneys representing the state in court have denied that their work violated the Voting Rights Act or constitutional protections against discrimination.
Who are the plaintiffs?
The remaining plaintiffs in the case are coalitions of organizations representing Latino and Black Texans, such as the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Texas NAACP, and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, among others, as well as individual Texans.
They had filed suits in 2021 arguing that the Texas Legislature discriminated against voters of color in the drawing of its political district maps. Their lawsuits were later consolidated.
What are they asking for?
The plaintiffs are calling for the court to rule that the maps are unconstitutional and unlawful, and to order that they be redrawn in a way that does not “dilute the strength of Latino voters in Texas,” court documents state.
The maps have affected communities of Latino and Black voters in North Texas, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area, in the Rio Grande Valley, and in Central Texas, near one of the nation’s largest military communities in Killeen.
Texas has been sued and found liable for violating the Voting Rights Act every previous redistricting cycle since 1973, said Nina Perales, vice president of litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who represents the coalition of Latino organizations in the case and has represented plaintiffs against the state since the early 2000s.
What happens now?
Such complex, long-running cases require a lot of resources, which the Justice Department has, said Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s civil rights division.
The federal government’s withdrawal leaves the private plaintiffs to pursue the cases on their own.
Perales said the Justice Department’s decision does not affect the remaining parties’ stance in the case.
A trial has been set for May 21.
Read more coverage of the case and the Justice Department’s stance in voting rights cases:
Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.
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