A federal court invalidated two of Texas' congressional districts on Tuesday, concluding that they violated the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of minorities.
In a 107-page ruling -- part of a long-running legal battle -- a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas found that District 27, which includes Corpus Christi, had been drawn to deny voters in a heavily Hispanic county "their opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice," and that ethnicity had been the primary factor in drawing District 35, a narrow strip that stretches from San Antonio to Austin.
The judges, however, upheld the validity of other districts, including ones that had been challenged in Houston and in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
The panel, in San Antonio, ruled that state officials had adopted the map in question in 2013 as part of a deliberate strategy to maintain "discrimination or unconstitutional effects" while preventing voters from challenging those effects. If Texas legislators do not begin a redistricting process, the court will hold a hearing Sept. 5 to discuss remedies.
Though the judges did not invalidate all of the challenged districts, Brent Wilkes, chief executive of the League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the plaintiffs, said he considered the ruling "on balance a victory for us."
"It backs up what we've been saying, that the Texas Legislature intentionally diminished the rights of Latino voters in particular to elect the candidates of their choice," Wilkes said. "We feel that we've been vindicated in the courts."
Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said in a statement that his office would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. Opponents of the districts that the court upheld could also seek Supreme Court review.
The ruling was the latest in a six-year dispute stemming from Texas' redistricting process after the 2010 census. Because of the legal challenges, the initial maps drawn by lawmakers in 2011 -- parts of which the same court deemed unlawful this March -- never went into effect. The 2012 elections were conducted with interim maps drawn by the court -- ones the judges said they had been forced to put together hastily because those elections were looming.
In 2013, state lawmakers voted, instead of redrawing the 2011 maps, to simply adopt the interim ones. On Tuesday, the judges concluded that this was part of "a litigation strategy designed to insulate the 2011 or 2013 plans from further challenge, regardless of their legal infirmities."
In a statement, Paxton praised the parts of the ruling that went in Texas' favor, but said the invalidation of districts 27 and 35 was "puzzling considering the Legislature adopted the congressional map the same court itself adopted in 2012, and the Obama-era Department of Justice did not bring any claims against the map." Spokesmen for Gov. Greg Abbott did not respond to an email requesting comment Tuesday evening.
The judges, for their part, said they had never indicated that the interim maps were suitable for long-term use.
"Although this court had 'approved' the maps for use as interim maps, given the severe time constraints it was operating under at the time of their adoption," the ruling said, that approval was "not based on a full examination of the record or the governing law" and was "subject to revision."
"Rather than trying to cleanse the plans of continuing discriminatory intent or legal defect," the judges said, Texas officials' strategy involved "arguing that the 2011 plans would never go into effect and thus could have no harmful effects, and arguing that the 2013 plans could have no impermissible intent," even though "there is unquestionably both intent and ongoing effect." This, they said, was an attempt to prevent the plaintiffs "from obtaining relief for purposeful racial discrimination."
Gilberto Hinojosa, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, said in a statement that the state's Republican officials had "politically profited from discrimination."
"It is wrong, and although nothing can fully make it right, we now hope to stop it," Hinojosa said. "Texas Democrats look forward to ensuring Texans have fair maps in the remedy hearings to come."
In addition to the League of United Latin American Citizens, the plaintiffs in the case, which was consolidated from several lawsuits, include the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, the Texas State Conference of NAACP Units, three members of Congress and Texas voters.
Information for this article was contributed by Manny Fernandez of The New York Times.
A Section on 08/17/2017