Thursday evening, the Justice Department filed two documents in the Washington case. In one, Justice Department lawyers said they do not object to a new request by Texas to dismiss that case in view of the legislature’s enactment of new maps to replace the 2011 districts. The government said that, since Texas has no plans to implement the 2011 maps, there was no need for that court to rule further upon that case.
In the second, and more important, document filed by the government in Washington, it argued that the San Antonio case was a better lawsuit in which to decide whether to apply the Section 3 remedy and put Texas back under a preclearance duty. There are procedural questions, that filing argued, about whether the intervening challengers have a right to put forth a Section 3 plea in a case in which they are not the ones who had sued. That is not an issue in San Antonio, it said..
The papers filed in Washington were submitted just ahead of a Friday deadline for new filings in that case.