The NAACP is suing Texas over its new congressional maps that are expected to give Republicans five more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
The NAACP is suing Texas over its new congressional maps, calling them racially gerrymandered in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
The nation’s largest civil rights organization filed the motion Tuesday seeking a preliminary injunction against the new maps in ongoing litigation in a 2021 case it filed against Texas over its previously drawn maps, which it said “intentionally diluted the votes of Black Texans and other Texans of color.”
“The State of Texas is only 40% White but White voters control over 73% of the state’s congressional seats,” Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, said in a statement.
“It’s quite obvious that Texas’ effort to redistrict mid-decade, before next year’s midterm elections, is racially motivated. The state’s intent here is to reduce the members of Congress who represent Black communities, and that in, and of itself, is unconstitutional.”
The NAACP, along with civil rights groups and the Justice Department, under the previous Biden administration, sued Texas in December 2021, alleging Texas’ then newly drawn congressional maps to be in violation of the Voting Rights Act and the 14th Amendment.
Based on new census data, Texas had gained 4 million people, 95% of whom were people of color, gaining the state two new congressional House seats. The NAACP argues the new maps based on the new information were gerrymandered as the new seats, despite the demographic shift, were draw to favor Anglo-majority districts.
In March — amid litigation and after President Donald Trump won re-election and returned to the White House — the Justice Department dismissed its claims in the case, the trial for which ended on June 11.
Less than a month afterward, the Justice Department sent Texas a letter arguing that four Democrat-held congressional seats were racially gerrymandered, instructing Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, to redraw them.
Those redrawn maps are expected to give Republicans five additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, which were recently passed by both the Texas state House and Senate.
Democrats have been furious with this change, accusing the Trump administration of attempting a power grab to increase the Republicans’ odds of maintaining control of the congressional branch following next year’s midterm elections.
The NAACP, represented by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, argued in the Tuesday court document that Texas “overtly targeted districts where multiple minority groups together constituted a majority of the voters.”
“Dismantling Congressional districts because of their racial composition is intentional discrimination,” the civil rights group said in the motion.
The civil rights group is asking the court for a permanent injunction against the state from enforcing the alleged gerrymandered maps.
“We now see how far extremist leaders are willing to go to push African Americans back toward a time when we were denied full personhood and equal rights,” NAACP Texas President Gary Bledsoe said in a statement.
“We call on Texans of every background to recognize the dangers of this moment. Our democracy depends on ensuring that every person is counted fully, valued equally and represented fairly.”
