EL PASO, Tx., August 30, 2025: Within hours of the Texas legislature adopting the new congressional district maps giving the Republicans five additional seats, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) announced that they have filed a federal civil lawsuit contesting the redistricting maps because they “dilute Latino and Black political power.” The LULAC lawsuit supplements the 2021 legal challenge filed by LULAC.
On Monday and Tuesday, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus (MALC) joined the LULAC lawsuit.
The listed plaintiffs of the LULAC lawsuit are Heidi Cruz of Austin, Sylvia Bruni of Laredo, Gwendolyn Collins of Richmond, Cecilia Gonzalez of Arlington, Charles Johnson, Jr. of Cedar Hills, Agustin Loredo of Baytown, Marci Madla of San Antonio, Rogelio Nuñez of San Benito, Jana Lynne Sanchez of Fort Worth, Mercedes Salinas of Corpus Christi, Vincent Sanders of Houston, Jerry Shafer, also of Baytown, and Debbie Lynn Solis of Dallas.
All the plaintiffs are Latino voters, except for Collins, Johnson, Sanders who are Black voters. All the plaintiffs said in the lawsuit that they intend to vote in future congressional elections.
The August 23 LULAC federal civil rights lawsuit argues that the newly adopted maps are “intentionally destroying majority-minority districts and replacing them with majority-Anglo districts.” The lawsuit alleges violations of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.
According to the LULAC lawsuit, the newly adopted congressional maps violated the Voting Rights Act “by failing to draw at least six additional districts in which Latino voters have the ability to elect candidates” in Bexar, Harris and Rio Grande counties, as well as counties in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro areas.
After the 2002 elections, when Texas Republicans gained control of the Texas House, they introduced new congressional redistricting maps. In 2003, in an attempt to stop the redistricting, 51 Texas House Democrats fled to Oklahoma to delay the vote on the redistricting. Eleven Texas State senators, the “Texas Eleven,” fled to New Mexico, joining the “Killer Ds” quorum breaking tactic. Both failed in their attempt to stop the maps from being adopted.
LULAC filed suit and on December 12, 2005, the US Supreme Court ruled that the “Texas Legislature’s redistricting plan did not violate the Constitution, but that part of the plan violated the Voting Rights Act.” The latest LULAC challenge continues the lawsuits that followed.
The latest lawsuit argues that the redrawn congressional maps signed by Abbott on Friday are “racially discriminatory.”
Marina Jenkins of National Redistricting Foundation issued the following statement: “What’s happening in Texas underscores that racially discriminatory voting practices, unfortunately, remain alive and well to this day, and the courts must continue to enforce voting rights protections.” She continued, “Texas’s existing map already dilutes the voting power of communities of color, which now make up 60 percent of the statewide population in the Lone Star State, and has been the subject of ongoing litigation.”
Jenkins concluded that “In spite of that, the state has doubled down with an even more extreme racial gerrymander that goes even further to pack and crack communities of color and minimize the number of congressional districts where minority voters have the ability to elect candidates of their choice.” She added, “the court has already agreed to consider expediting this case, and we are confident that justice will be delivered for Texans.”
The first court hearing on the case is scheduled for October 1 in El Paso.
Stay with El Paso Herald Post for updates to the lawsuit as soon as they become available.
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The post LULAC Lawsuit Against Newly Adopted Congressional Redistricting Maps appeared first on El Paso Herald Post.
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