Texas Officially Walks Back Justification For Redistricting, Throws DOJ Under Bus

Texas Republicans are officially renouncing the rationale they used to justify their mid-decade redistricting effort, as they get ready to defend their new gerrymander in court. 

Constitutional concerns raised in July by the U.S. Department of Justice, which the state had cited as the reason for the re-draw, were in fact a “mistake,” the state now says in a new court filing Tuesday. 

The filing also appears to acknowledge that Gov. Greg Abbott (R) knowingly misled the public when he pointed to those concerns, saying Abbott used DOJ as “political cover” to hide the partisan goal of the effort.

Starting Oct. 1, a federal court will hear arguments on Texas’ recently passed congressional map, which is being challenged as racially discriminatory. The map, if allowed to stand, could give the GOP five additional seats in Congress, while reducing the voting power of Texas’ Black and Latino communities.

Racial discrimination in redistricting is illegal under the Voting Rights Act, but acting purely for partisan reasons is not. As a result, lawyers for Texas are at pains to show that, despite Abbott’s past statements, race played no role in the map’s creation.

In July, Abbott called a special session with redistricting on the agenda just two days after receiving a letter from Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon. In the letter, Dhillon urged the state to dismantle four majority-minority congressional districts that she claimed had been impermissibly created using race. President Donald Trump had been pressuring the state to redraw its map in order to boost the GOP’s chances of keeping control of Congress next year.

Announcing the redistricting, Abbott noted “constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice.” 

Democrats and voting advocates have pointed to Dhillon’s letter as striking evidence that Republicans redrew the map to reduce the voting power of minority Texans. During both legislative special sessions over the summer, Republicans attempted to distance themselves from the letter – with some lawmakers saying they disagreed with Dhillon – while they insisted their gerrymander had nothing to do with race. 

But in the Tuesday filing, Texas went a step further. 

“A legislative act based on [a] mistake – or that cite (sic) a Washington official’s mistake as political cover for lawful political redistricting – remains a valid legislative act,” the filing said. 

In a separate filing Tuesday, the state summed up why it deemed Dhillon’s letter to be a mistake.  

“The DOJ Letter came to the erroneous conclusion that because the Fifth Circuit held in Petteway v. Galveston Cnty, that a legislative body was not required to create coalition districts under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (Section 2), that the existence of any district so composed was illegal. Its ham-fisted legal conclusions notwithstanding, the DOJ Letter apparently sought to provide political cover for Texas to engage in partisan redistricting.”

The state also concluded DOJ was mistaken in believing “a State can purposefully seek out and destroy multiracial majority districts that just happen to exist—and do so expressly on account of their racial makeup.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Texas’ claim that Dhillon’s letter was mistaken.

The filing also suggested that when Abbott cited DOJ’s letter, he was seeking to hide the partisan motive behind the redistricting effort.

“Governor Abbott’s statements plainly reflect no desire to redraw districts because of their racial makeup, but instead an effort to transform the State’s most heavily Democratic districts regardless of their racial makeup and to cite a legal necessity (rather than political desire) as the goal,” the filing said.

Voting advocates and minority voters* fighting the map in court have also argued Abbott’s comments in a July interview prove the new map was drawn because of race. 

Asked why he put redistricting on the special session agenda, Abbott said last year’s federal court ruling in Petteway v. Galveston County found coalition districts – which are districts where multiple minority groups with the same political preferences form the majority – “are no longer required and so we want to make sure that we have maps that don’t impose coalition districts.”

*The Texas voters are represented by the Elias Law Group (ELG). ELG firm chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.