Where Texas redistricting lawsuits stand after U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Alabama case

The state faces an assortment of legal challenges to its congressional and statehouse maps, including allegations of intentional discrimination, vote dilution and racial gerrymandering. For example:

Republican lawmakers and attorneys representing the state in court have denied that their work ran afoul of the Voting Rights Act or constitutional protections against discrimination.The high court ruled last week that Alabama had diluted the voting strength of Black voters in redrawing its congressional map and required that it draw the districts again, giving Black voters a real chance of securing a second district in which they have the opportunity to elect their representatives.

Lawmakers are generally not allowed to draw districts predominantly on the basis of race. But the Voting Rights Act can require them to consider race when sketching boundaries under certain circumstances, namely to protect or create “opportunity districts” in which voters of color make up a majority of the electorate and can usually elect their preferred candidate.

“One of the things that the majority did is it really refused to rewrite Section 2 along the lines of various arguments that defendants are raising across the country,” said Yurij Rudensky, who serves as a redistricting counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice and represents a group of plaintiffs in the Texas case.— an assertion the Supreme Court’s majority disagreed with explicitly in its decision.

At issue are subpoenas and motions to compel certain documents from legislators and third parties. The state and the plaintiffs are also quarreling over lawmakers’ assertions during depositions of what’s known as legislative privilege, which allows legislators to keep secret their communications on policy along with their “thoughts and mental impressions.”

The release of disputed documents, the plaintiffs argued in earlier court filings, could reveal new facts requiring additional depositions of state lawmakers who relied on asserting legislative privilege to avoid divulging information on how the maps were drafted.

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