Posted on 09/19/2011 3:11:50 PM PDT by smoothsailing
David Wasserman
September 19, 2011
The Obama administration is issuing its first civil rights challenge to a redistricting plan against Texas, the state that will gain the most congressional seats from the once-a-decade redrawing of the nation's political map.
It marks the first challenge by the Justice Department to a redistricting plan this year and it has major political implications: The fight could determine which party stands a better shot of winning four new Texas House seats, and it potentially represents the opening round of a political fight between the president and the Lone Star State governor who is vying to unseat him, Republican Rick Perry.
Attorneys for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division on Tuesday said they will fight the Republican-drawn Texas congressional and state House maps in a preclearance trial before the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing that it violates Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
Latino groups, along with Texas Democrats, had alleged that the Perry-signed congressional map granted Latinos no new net opportunities to elect the candidate of their choice even though Latinos accounted for a majority of the population growth that is earning Texas four new House seats. Texas Republicans, led by Attorney General Greg Abbott, foresaw that the Justice Department would deny them preclearance and are currently going to trial against the DOJ in the DC District Court to seek approval for the map.
The Justice Department is expected to lay out its specific objections to the maps and stipulations for fixes tomorrow. So far, the Justice Department has been relatively lenient in clearing state redistricting plans, disappointing some Democrats earlier this summer by approving a Republican-drawn map in Louisiana that denied African-Americans a second majority seat. However, given the Latino surge and high stakes in Texas, Democrats were not surprised that DOJ lawyers found the Texas plan to be discriminatory to Latinos in its intent and effect. Had the Texas plan been okayed, said Democratic redistricting attorney Gerald Hebert, “I would think that there’s nobody home at the Justice Department.”
Given Texas Republicans’ legal strategy to bypass the DOJ, the Civil Rights Division’s stance shouldn’t come as a surprise to the GOP either. But according to one GOP redistricting expert who requested anonymity in order to speak more candidly about the process, the fight over the Texas map is now entering the “kind of worst possible world.” The expert predicts the Justice Department's position and large number of interveners in the case could add up to an extended discovery phase and a long and costly trial at the DC District Court, which could prompt a federal court in San Antonio to “draw a de novo plan using the current plan as a benchmark.”
The Republican map already has taken plenty of hits in this month’s separate trial before a three-judge federal panel in San Antonio. Latino groups ranging from the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund to the League of United Latin American Citizens expressed optimism at last Friday’s conclusion of the trial that the judges would rule some of the most blatant elements of the map to be unlawful and discriminatory. “Judges were asking why no new Latino seats were drawn in North Texas,” says Hebert, who participated in the trial.
Another ominous sign for Republicans: the GOP’s defense of the map in San Antonio veered off track when one of their own expert witnesses, Rice University professor John Alford, testified that the congressional map created no new net Latino opportunities.
The San Antonio federal court faces a time crunch: they would prefer to wait to issue their own ruling until the DC District Court rules on preclearance, but Texas’s candidate filing period for the March 2012 primary is supposed to open in November. While the federal court could theoretically delay the date of the state’s primary, it’s unclear how far they would be willing to push back the state’s calendar to give the GOP’s map a chance. “If I were in Democrats’ shoes,” says the GOP expert, “I’d draw [the DC District Court trial] out as long as possible.”
A de novo (from scratch) plan would indeed amount to a disastrous outcome for Texas Republicans, whose line-drawing handiwork would never see the light of day if federal judges impose their own map for 2012. The GOP-approved congressional map created 26 safe seats for Republicans and 10 safe seats for Democrats. Insiders on both sides of the partisan divide a court-drawn map could cost Republicans the West Texas 23rd CD and Dallas-area 33rd CD at a minimum and put as many as three additional GOP seats in limbo.
Is it a coincidence that the DOJ has picked its first redistricting fight over a Perry-signed map that Latino groups allege is discriminatory? Could the GOP have guaranteed more of what it wanted by playing it safe and ceding one of the four new seats as a Latino opportunity district? Those questions, says the GOP expert, may be “imponderables.”
ping
*sigh* not again....
I'm sure that a handful of loonies on FR will find a way to blame Rick Perry for this too, though.
GARRRRRDDDDAAAASSSIIIIILLLL!!!
Maybe they should start checking out citizenship status on Latinos - if they want to fight, then we should bring the fight to them.
I’m SHOCKED, SHOCKED that the Eric Holder DOJ might be acting in the most crass political way possible. Never could have seen that coming!
Will the DOJ and federal judges be telling us what election outcomes are also “legal”, and that any elections minorities lose must be “illegal”?
It is up to state legislatures and governors to define their districts, anything else is usurpation.
justice dept, ARF, it’;s nothing more than a racist political arm of this admin.
After letting the black racists go the GOP should have put pressure on him to step down
You know they will...The RINO WHINOS!
Just another round in obast@rds war on Perry, Texas, and Texans...
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Texas will say FUBO to a federal power grab.
This isn’t surprising Governor Perry, and AG Greg Abbott will be all over this. It will end up at the USSC...
Their (Republican) counter-argument MUST BE that IF Latino representation is a problem for the DOJ, then ALL Latino's must have Photo ID, to assure legal voters are the ones that are represented and are the CAUSE of the growth.
Then, if denied, take it to the USSC and get voter ID Nationwide approved/mandated by the USSC NOW!
As William Learned Marcy said, “To the victor belong the spoils.”
The DOJ has no business messing in State affairs.
Of course with Holder and the bama boy the Constitution and other laws do not mean a thing to their agenda.
All the more reason for Pennsylvania republicans to go ahead with their delegate rule change.
The census counts both legals and illegals so the congressional districts represent both legal and illegal and his illegal pets are showing just how much they appreciate his dissing the law by screwing America as a whole.
Elect Perry Prez and this Tex mess will be all over the country.
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