On December 6th this year, the US Department of Justice sued the State of Texas for alleging violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, for the redistricting process led by Republicans this October year, where people from minority groups, such as Latinos and blacks, ended up having their votes diluted with possible political under-representation.

According to The New York Times, it was the second lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice against Texas. In November of this year, a new Texas voting law was introduced, and it could block the access to “Texans who do not speak English, people with disabilities, older voters, and those who live outside the United States”.

The most recently lawsuit takes into consideration the 2020 Census, which demonstrated that Latinos are on their way to becoming the largest population group in Texas, and that about 40% of the state's population are self-declared non-white Latinos. Note that the increase in the population of the State to 4 million people, 95% of this total is made up of minority groups. In addition, the suit presents other cases of redistricting in which minority districts disappeared or were “redesigned in such a way that minority voters in urban areas were counted again in rural, predominantly white areas”.

According to the publication, “the suit filed by the department on Monday also puts other states on notice as they redraw their voting districts, a process that occurs once a decade. Seventeen states have already finalized congressional maps this year, with more expected to complete the process before the spring”.

However, the lawsuit is one more among other existing disputes between the Biden government and the State of Texas, which adds greater political challenges to the federal process that is very likely to face obstacles in court.

The publication states that “the lawsuit, even if it succeeds, is unlikely to change the enacted Texas maps before the midterm elections next November, when control of Congress is at stake. A decade ago, litigation over Republican-drawn districts in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and elsewhere took years before courts ordered new lines drawn”.

Another obstacle concerns a Supreme Court decision in 2019 that ruled on the partisan gerrymandering in the historic case “Rucho v. Common”, when “the Court ruled that while partisan gerrymandering may be “incompatible with democratic principles”, the federal courts cannot review such allegations, as they present unjustifiable political questions outside the remit of these courts”, although racial gerrymandering is still unconstitutional.

According to The New York Times, amidst a tangle of legal and political issues, the Department of Justice is committed to prove Texas's violation of federal law in the process it sought to redraw its electoral maps. Based on the population change revealed by 2020 Census, “the Justice Department is asking the courts to force Texas to create and implement a new redistricting plan and to establish interim plans that remedy the components of its current redistricting plan that are deemed to be unlawful”.