By Andrew Schneider - A federal court in Austin will soon hear a lawsuit charging Texas with discriminating against minority voters in last year’s redistricting process. . .

A coalition of civil rights organizations makes up the plaintiffs’ legal team, among them the ACLU Foundation of Texas, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF). The team also includes attorneys from New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice and the law firm of Paul, Weiss.

Jerry Vattamala, director of the Democracy Program at AALDEF, said the reason the lawsuit is necessary at all is because the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder struck down part of the Voting Rights Act.

“I’m pretty sure, as most of my colleagues would also agree, that if we still had federal preclearance under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, these lines would not have satisfied preclearance,” Vattamala said. . . .