The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday sued Texas, alleging its redistricting map violates the Voting Rights Act.
The legislature "surgically excised" minority neighborhoods from the Dallas-Fort Worth core and attached them to "heavily Anglo rural counties," giving the minorities a lack of equal "electoral opportunity," the complaint states as one example.
Additionally, the two seats Texas gained due to the increased population in the 2020 census will wrongly be majority-white, the federal government is asserting.
Several congressional districts were redrawn "with discriminatory intent," Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta told a press conference in Washington.
Gupta described the process Texas officials went through as "rushed," with little opportunity for members of the public to comment and without any expert testimony.
The suit names John Scott, the Texas secretary of state, as well as the state of Texas.
Scott and Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Republicans also control the legislature in the state. They approved the districts in majority votes earlier this year and Abbott signed off on them in October.
Republican state Sen. Joan Huffman, the chair of the Senate Redistricting Committee, has said in Austin that the maps were "drawn blind to race" and complied with the Voting Rights Act.
Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair Chris Turner cheered the suit, saying in a statement that "Texas’ population growth— 95 percent of which was in communities of color—demands that the Legislature draw maps that give Black, Hispanic, and Asian-American voters more, not fewer, opportunities to elect the candidates of their choice."
Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden nominee, acknowledged to reporters that the 2013 Supreme Court ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, which ruled unconstitutional a portion of the Voting Rights Act, would make challenging the Texas redistricting harder.
The ruling found section 4(b) was unconstitutional. Section 5 is currently not in effect without the other section, pending a new bill from Congress.
“Without section 5, here are two problems: One, it means that we don’t get a chance to look at these things before they go into effect, which is a very significant aspect of our tools, and instead requires that we challenge every case individually,” Garland said. “And second, it flips the burden of proof.”