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Public News Service: Lawsuit Claims Texas Redistricting Maps Disenfranchise Minority Voters

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Texas' population grew by 13.7% between 2010 and 2020, with Black, Latino, and Asian American and Pacific Islander residents representing the three fastest-growing groups. CREDIT: BRENNAN CENTER

By Roz Brown/Public News Service

AUSTIN, Texas — Legal challenges are piling up in Texas over newly-drawn congressional and legislative district maps, with the latest alleging they disenfranchise people of color.

The Fair Maps Texas Action Committee filed a legal challenge this week on behalf of a coalition of voting and civil-rights groups and individual voters.

Jerry Vattamala, director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said despite people of color accounting for 95% of the state’s population boom over the last decade, the new maps appear to be drawn to diminish their influence.

“These lines are essentially silencing them,” Vattamala asserted.

“Surgically removing these communities and adding them with white, rural counties to essentially dilute their vote.”

The plaintiffs’ legal team wants a federal court to block the plans from being used and order new maps.