The NAACP and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging Texas’ new congressional district maps, alleging they violate the Voting Rights Act.
“The lawsuit contends that Texas has engaged in racial gerrymandering to prevent Black voters from electing candidates of their choice,” Derrick Johnson, the NAACP’s president and CEO, said in a press release. “It’s quite obvious that Texas’s 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.”
Since the Voting Rights Act was adopted, the state of Texas has been found to have discriminated against minority citizens after every cycle of redistricting, the NAACP claimed.