DC Trial Forthcoming; San Antonio Federal Court to Proceed on Interim Maps
Moments ago, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia denied the State’s motion for summary judgment on the Republican-drawn maps for U.S. House of Representatives, State Senate and State House.
The order, which you can read in its entirety here, read in part:
Having carefully considered the entire record and the parties’ arguments, the Court finds and concludes that the State of Texas used an improper standard or methodology to determine which districts afford minority voters the ability to elect their preferred candidates of choice and that there are material issues of fact in dispute that prevent this Court from entering declaratory judgment that the three redistricting plans meet the requirements of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. See 42 U.S.C. 1973c.
Texas Democratic Party Chairman, Boyd Richie, issued the following statement:
“Rick Perry’s Republican Party used every dirty trick they could think of to keep voters from deciding elections. After laying-off tens of thousands of teachers, I can understand why Republicans don’t want to face voters. Thankfully the courts are not going to let them disenfranchise millions of Texans with these illegal maps.
Republicans drew blatantly illegal maps then tried to game the system by going through the courts rather than the Department of Justice. Yet even the courts threw their dirty maps out the window. The courts said what we’ve been saying all along. These illegal maps trample on the voting rights of Texans and don’t allow voters to elect their candidates of choice.
The real losers in this process are the voters. Texas voters are seeing Republican discrimination and obstructionism at all levels but don’t know which Republicans they’ll have a chance to vote against this election cycle.
This entire process could have been avoided if Republicans would have drawn maps based on demographics rather than their own shallow political ambitions.”
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