The U.S. Department of Justice has sued Texas over voter maps, citing discrimination Politics News

The department says the Texas plan violates U.S. voting laws by reducing the power of black, Latino, and other minority voters.

The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Texas, reconsidering the state Congress and state law districts, saying the new plan violates U.S. voting laws. discriminating against minority voters.

A lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas on Monday alleges that the map of the Texas Congressional and state legislative districts violates a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The lawsuit alleges that most of Texas’ population growth over the past decade has come from black, Latino, and Asian residents, but the new maps drawn by state Republicans do not give any of those communities a new chance to choose their representatives.

Instead, the maps bring together black and Latino communities in odd-looking neighborhoods – one in Dallas is called the “sea-horse” form – while preserving safe seats for white Republicans.

Plans to change Texas districts “deny or restrict the right to vote for Latino and black voters because of their race, color, or language as members of a minority group,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a news conference in Washington, DC. auzia.

The case is the first legal action in the redevelopment cycle of U.S. President Joe Biden’s state-of-the-art maps.

It comes as a result of a push for Republican-controlled state legislatures to limit voting after the 2020 presidential election. These efforts were encouraged by former President Donald Trump false claims that fraud has spread it hindered last year’s vote.

The Brennan Center for Justice, a New York University research center documenting U.S. voting law, reports that at least 19 states have enacted 33 laws that make it harder for Americans to vote from Jan. 1 to Sept. 27 this year.

In June, the Department of Justice He sued the state of Georgia on a restrictive new electoral law, and presented it another lawsuit Against Texas in November as a result of a new state law restricting postal voting, among other restrictions.

“This is not the first time Texas has acted to curtail the voting rights of minority citizens,” Attorney General Vanita Gupta said at a news conference Monday. “Over the decades, the courts have found that Texas has established plans to change constituencies that deliberately reduce the voting power of Latino and black voters and violate the Voting Rights Act.”

In one tweet, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has dismissed the Justice Department’s case as an “absurd” intrusion by the Biden administration.

“The Department of Justice’s absurd lawsuit against our state is the latest ploy by the Biden Administration to control Texas voters,” Paxton said. “I am convinced that the redistricting decisions of our legislature will prove to be legitimate, and that this senseless attempt to change democracy will fail.”

Article 2 of the U.S. Voting Rights Act prohibits U.S. state mappers from restricting the power of minorities by scattering them in different constituencies.

A 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturned a provision in the Voting Rights Act that required Texas and other states. history of racial discrimination Approval by the Department of Justice before the maps come into force.

“I want to ask Congress again to restore the Department of Justice’s pre-emptive power. If that were still in effect, it probably wouldn’t be here today to announce this complaint,” Garland said.