lThe US Department of Justice is suing Texas over its new electoral maps, saying the plans violate the Voting Rights Act by making it more difficult for Black and Latino voters to elect their preferred candidates.
Minority voters accounted for 95% of population growth in Texas over the last decade but there are no new majority-minority districts in the new plans.
The DoJ suit says Texas violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race.
Vanita Gupta, the No 3 official at the justice department, said some of the districts were drawn with “discriminatory intent”.
Last week, the DoJ made filings in three cases challenging new voting restrictions in Arizona, Texas and Florida, defending the scope of Section 2.
In their Monday press conference, both Garland and Gupta called for Congress to restore a provision of the Voting Rights Act that required states with a history of voting discrimination, including Texas, to get electoral maps and voting changes approved by the federal government before they went into effect.
In 2011, the DoJ used the provision to prevent some of Texas’s initial proposed maps from going into effect. »
