Texas Used DOJ’s Concerns to Justify Redistricting. Now It Says They’re Off Base.

Days after saying it needed to redistrict because of constitutional concerns raised about its congressional map by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Texas argued in a new court filing Saturday that those concerns are in fact off base.

The seeming contradiction raises new questions about the decision by the state’s Republican leaders to conduct a rare mid-decade redistricting — which came after pressure from the Trump White House, as it looks to boost the GOP in next year’s midterms.

In Saturday’s filing in federal court, lawyers for Texas suggested that the constitutional concerns raised in a July 7 letter sent by DOJ to Texas should be discounted. 

The filing argued that the letter, which warned that the state may have unconstitutionally used race in drawing four majority-minority districts and urged it to create a new map, is “not evidence — new or otherwise — of racial gerrymandering.” And it called DOJ “a third party with no actual knowledge of Texas’s redistricting process.” 

Texas was responding to a motion filed Thursday by lawyers for civil-rights groups who are challenging the current map as a racial gerrymander. That motion noted that Gov. Greg Abbott (R) “approvingly cit[ed]” DOJ’s letter when he announced Wednesday that the state would hold a special session to redistrict. 

Texas’ apparent acceptance of DOJ’s concerns, the motion argued, suggests state officials, as well as the national Republican operative who produced the map, gave false testimony when they told the court race wasn’t a factor in the map-drawing. 

“I drew the maps blind to race,” State Sen. Joan Huffman (R), who chaired the Senate committee that handled the 2021 redistricting, told the court June 10, according to court transcripts reviewed by Democracy Docket.

Last year, in the landmark Petteway v. Galveston County case, the 5th Circuit ruled that the Voting Rights Act does not permit minority-coalition districts.

In their letter to Texas, DOJ lawyers wrote that, in light of Petteway, they had “concerns regarding the legality” of the four congressional districts, “which currently constitute unconstitutional ‘coalition districts.’” The letter urged Texas to “rectify these race-based considerations.” 

Two days later, Abbott announced the redraw, citing “constitutional concerns raised by the Department of Justice.”

That confluence of events has led to charges that the letter was a pretext to give Texas an excuse to redistrict.

The letter’s “evident purpose is to provide a justification for Texas if it redraws those four districts,” Guy-Uriel E. Charles, a professor at Harvard Law School, wrote online Friday.

Republicans already control 25 of Texas’ 38 congressional seats – a percentage that far exceeds their overall vote-share in the state. But the White House, with an eye on maintaining control of Congress in next year’s midterms, has pressured Texas to draw an even more GOP-friendly map.

 Some plaintiffs in the Texas redistricting lawsuit are represented by the Elias Law Group (ELG). ELG Firm Chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.

Jen Rice contributed to this story.