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 United States 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 race 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 on Sept. 5 to discuss remedies.
Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said in a statement that his office would ask the United States 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.
