From UC Irvine election law professor Rick Hasen’s blog last night…
Texas defends itself against claims it discriminated against minority voters by claiming it discriminated against Democrats (p. 19):
DOJ’s accusations of racial discrimination are baseless. In 2011, both houses of the Texas Legislature were controlled by large Republican majorities, and their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party’s electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats. It is perfectly constitutional for a Republican-controlled legislature to make partisan districting decisions, even if there are incidental effects on minority voters who support Democratic candidates.
Lovely, Texas.
Our own Ernie Canning covered the DoJ’s recent federal court filing seeking to require preclearance for all new election laws in Texas, given their recent history of racial discrimination in election-related laws. The move by DoJ comes on the heels of the Supreme Court’s June decision in Shelby County v. Holder which otherwise tossed out the list of racially discriminating jurisdictions (Texas had been one of them) previously covered by the Voting Rights Act’s pre-clearance requirement.
Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog offers a very good summary of both the case and Texas’ response filed this week.
Hasen characterizes the Texas response as an “overreach” in their attempt to hide behind the Shelby County decision. However, Hasen also cautions that the Texas argument “could well find a receptive audience at the Supreme Court.” And, I should also mention, the final paragraph of Hasen’s article is chilling.
Hello Brad Friedman,
I wish to change what people used to call the “Supreme Court”. I think for brevity calling them the “Supremes” could do but my favorite way to describe this bunch of “yahoos” is the “Extreme Kourt”!
I thought about this for a while: It’s a red herring. It doesn’t matter that their intent was to discriminate against Democrats; it’s how they went about it: By selecting people by race and creed; and by designing voting requirements to introduce Jim Crow-like financial burdens on citizens.
The court should reject the argument summarily, and the plaintiffs should not be distracted and consider switching tacks.