Voting-rights coalition quits challenge to Texas’ 2021 redistricting after court setback

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Two months before a scheduled trial, a coalition of voting rights groups is withdrawing from a long-running challenge to the political maps Texas drew after the 2020 U.S. census, which the groups said diluted the voting power of Black, Latino, Asian American and Pacific Islander Texans.

The outcome of the case, which has been making its way through the courts for nearly four years, will have implications on how much power Texans will have to decide who represents them in the state Legislature and U.S. Congress.

The voting-rights coalition said it decided against continuing the litigation after its claims were dismissed by a trial-court panel of federal judges in February, following a ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that experts said upended longstanding precedents.

The withdrawal is the latest tangible effect of recent court rulings that experts say make it difficult for coalitions to bring claims on behalf of groups of historically marginalized voters.

The coalition that withdrew included Fair Maps Texas Action Committee, OCA-Greater Houston, the North Texas chapter of the Asian Pacific Islander Americans Public Affairs Association, Emgage Texas, and 13 individual voters. They are represented by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, the ACLU of Texas, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Brennan Center for Justice.

Their case had been consolidated with that of other plaintiffs who were also challenging the maps. The remaining claims are still set to go to trial beginning May 21.

The remaining plaintiffs in the case are organizations representing Latino and Black Texans, such as the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Texas NAACP, and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, as well as individual Texans.

The Fifth Circuit had decided long ago that different groups of minority voters could be combined to support a claim in such a redistricting case, as long as they were groups that tended to vote the same way. Essentially, if there aren’t enough Black voters or Latino voters, or voters of another protected class, to make up a majority of the district by themselves, they can join forces as plaintiffs if they can show that their political interests align. That’s how the coalition of groups came together to challenge the Texas voting maps.

But in 2024, the same court overturned that precedent, prompting the trial court judges to dismiss the coalition’s claims. As a result, “It’ll be much harder for plaintiffs to bring those claims in the Fifth Circuit in Texas and in Mississippi and Louisiana, than it is elsewhere in the country,” 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 current case began after Texas redrew political maps in 2021 for congressional and state legislative districts. The updated maps were meant to reflect the state’s population growth, which, according to the 2020 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.

Hilary Harris Klein, voting rights senior counsel for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice representing the coalition, told Votebeat that for more than 10 years, Supreme Court rulings and state legislatures across the country have enabled the erosion of minority voting rights.

“It's very clear that governments today are still not providing equal opportunity for all voters, particularly in the south, particularly in Texas and and I very much fear that we are going to continue to lose ground,” Harris Klein said. “The courts are not stepping up to protect voters, but I’m hopeful that Congress will see the necessity to step in to do that.”

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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