New Appeal in Texas Redistricting Case

Press release via email:

 

Yesterday, on behalf of two Texas voters, the Project on Fair Representation filed a jurisdictional statement with the U. S. Supreme Court in Evenwel v. Abbott, a voting rights case.

 

At issue is the constitutionality of the Texas Senate redistricting plan which created thirty-one Texas Senate districts with roughly equal total population but with huge disparities in eligible voters.

 

The plaintiffs, both of whom reside in districts significantly overpopulated with eligible voters as compared to other districts in the same plan, brought this action alleging that the plan violated the one-person, one-vote principle of the Fourteenth Amendment under Reynolds v. Sims. Because of the overpopulation of eligible voters in the plaintiff’s districts, the weight of their vote is worth significantly less than those voters who reside in districts that are under-populated with eligible voters. The petition notes that the deviation between eligible voters in some Texas Senate districts approaches 50 percent.

 

The plan was challenged in 2014. Today’s filing is a direct appeal from a three-judge district court’s decision that held that the plaintiff’s constitutional challenge is a judicially unreviewable political question.

 

Edward Blum, president of the Project on Fair Representation, a not-for-profit legal defense foundation that provided counsel to the voters, said, “This case presents the Supreme Court with the opportunity to clarify whether a jurisdiction can create voting districts that result in the underrepresentation of eligible voters and the overrepresentation of non-eligible voters.”

 

The petition highlights the undisputed fact that that based on Texas’s own data, the state could have created districts equalizing total population and voter population to a significant degree.

 

Blum continued, “For the constitutional doctrine of ‘one person, one vote’ to have any meaning, some metric of voters rather than non-voters must be the basis for creating legislative districts when conditions like those in Texas exist.”

 

Founded in 2005, the Project on Fair Representation has provided counsel in a number of cases heard by the U.S. Supreme Court including Shelby Co. Ala. v. Holder and Abigail Fisher v. Univ. of Texas.

 

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