TEXAS REDISTRICTING & ELECTION LAW
Have questions, comments, suggestions, additional content, or a redistricting joke (or two)? Feel free to contact me:
Michael Li,
michael.li@nyu.edu, 646-292-8360.
The State of Texas has asked the San Antonio panel to grant judgment in its favor without a trial on the state senate claims brought by State Senator Wendy Davis and LULAC.
The motion overlaps substantially with the earlier motion to dismiss filed by the state, which remains pending with the court.
The heart of the state’s contention is the claim that SD-10 is not a protected district under the Voting Rights Act and that it is impossible to draw a version of SD-10 that would have a minority citizen voting age population majority, even if African-Americans and Hispanics are aggregated together.
The state also says that Davis and LULAC lack evidence of discriminatory intent in the drawing of the map. The state argues that the only evidence that Davis has that the district was “effective” as a coalition district was her election in 2008, which the state says was more the result of a “perfect storm” that strongly disfavored Republicans.
As a result, the state contends that it was free to dismantle the district and transform it into a stronger performing Republican district- something that it freely admits that it did.
Davis and LULAC are to file their responses on November 9, but have argued elsewhere that the state confuses crossover and coalition districts and that while a state is not required to draw a crossover district in the first instance, dismantling a crossover district, where one exists, raises significant legal and constitutional concerns.
Trial in the case is currently scheduled to start November 14.
The court also is in the process of considering an interim senate map for use in the 2012 election cycle and may issue a map perhaps as early as next week.
Here’s the state’s motion:
