In mid-August, amid Texas’ high-profile redistricting struggle, CNN’s Jake Tapper pressed Gov. Greg Abbott on why the state was instantly redrawing its congressional map.
“You might be doing this to offer Trump and Republicans within the Home of Representatives 5 further seats, proper?” Tapper requested. “That’s the motivation, is to stave off any midterm election losses.”
Abbott pushed again, citing a current fifth Circuit ruling that barred Black and Hispanic voters from becoming a member of collectively to deliver voting rights lawsuits.
“Once more, to be clear, Jake, the explanation why we’re doing that is due to that courtroom determination,” Abbott stated. “Texas is now licensed beneath legislation that modified that was totally different than in 2021 after we final did redistricting.”
This insistence, which Abbott repeated throughout a number of information interviews and was initially echoed by Republican lawmakers, is among the key allegations that led a federal courtroom to this week strike down Texas’ new congressional map as an unlawful racial gerrymander.
If Abbott had caught with the story that this was purely political gamesmanship, the courtroom would seemingly have allowed the redraw to face, based mostly on Supreme Courtroom precedent successfully sanctioning partisan gerrymanders. However by repeatedly tying the method to a courtroom ruling that modified the racial make-up of who can deliver authorized challenges beneath the Voting Rights Act, Abbott “explicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict based mostly on race,” Choose Jeffrey Brown wrote within the ruling that blocked Texas’ new map.
Brown’s 160-page opinion additionally sharply criticized Republican legislators for unduly tethering the method to race, and particularly condemned state Sen. Phil King, chair of the Senate redistricting committee, as untruthful and inconsistent on the stand.
In a scathing dissent issued the day after Brown’s ruling, fifth U.S. Circuit Choose Jerry Smith wrote that none of Abbott’s or the lawmakers’ feedback point out they introduced a racial lens to redistricting.
“The problem confronted by these plaintiffs and Choose Brown is to elucidate the way it may very well be that the Republicans would sacrifice their acknowledged aim of political achieve for racial concerns,” he stated, calling the ruling’s conclusions “each perverse and weird.”
The ruling, issued Tuesday, has already been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Courtroom, which is anticipated to behave rapidly. Candidates have till Dec. 8 to formally declare which seats they’re operating for in 2026, placing the onus on the courts to quickly make clear which map can be utilized in that election.
Abbott’s feedback
If there’s one factor everybody concerned can agree on, it’s that the letter was a mistake.
Whereas Trump was pressuring Texas Republicans to take up redistricting, Assistant U.S. Legal professional Common Harmeet Dhillon despatched a letter to Abbott and Texas Legal professional Common Ken Paxton, alerting them that 4 of the state’s congressional districts have been unconstitutional.
Dhillon pointed to a current ruling from the fifth Circuit, in a case titled Petteway v. Galveston County, that stated totally different racial teams can’t band collectively to deliver voting rights complaints. On account of that ruling, Texas wanted to redraw 4 of the bulk non-white congressional districts it had crafted in 2021, Dhillon wrote.
The state had simply concluded a monthlong trial by which its attorneys argued repeatedly that the 2021 maps have been drawn blind to race. Paxton responded to Dhillon’s letter reiterating that protection, however noting that the state nonetheless may undertake redistricting to shore up Republican energy within the state.
“The aim behind his letter seems to have been to refocus the redistricting dialogue towards permissible concerns like partisanship, politics, and conventional districting standards — and away from legally fraught concerns like race,” Brown wrote in his ruling. “If that was the letter’s goal, it didn’t work.”
Abbott continued to attract from Dhillon’s letter, directing the Legislature to redistrict “in mild of constitutional issues raised by the U.S. Division of Justice.”
“By incorporating DOJ’s race-based redistricting request by reference, the Governor was asking the Legislature to offer DOJ the racial rebalancing it needed — and for the explanations that DOJ cited,” Brown wrote.
The governor then went on a media blitz, telling a number of totally different retailers, together with CNN, that the redraw was due to these constitutional issues. In eliminating coalition districts, Abbott instructed Tapper, the brand new map “turned out to offer extra seats for Hispanics … It simply coincides it’s going to be Hispanic Republicans elected to these seats.”
Abbott later modified tact, eradicating references to the DOJ letter when he referred to as lawmakers again for a second particular session, after Democrats returned from their quorum break. However that doesn’t suffice to have “cleansed the primary proclamation’s racial taint,” Brown stated.
“The map that the Legislature handed throughout the second session was largely similar to the primary, indicating that racial concerns had already contaminated the map by the point the Governor issued the second proclamation,” he wrote.
Smith, the dissenting decide, stated the truth that Abbott’s feedback about Hispanic districts got here after the primary model of the map was drawn present that he had “adjusted his rhetoric to defend the map in a forward-facing capability,” moderately than directing the Legislature to redraw based mostly on a race-based premise.
In an announcement after the ruling, Abbott stated it was “absurd” to say the maps have been discriminatory.
“I’ve by no means seen a judgment, an opinion so misguided in his writing,” he added on Fox Information on Thursday. “It seemed like Choose Brown geared his writing to attempt to obtain a consequence, and that’s one thing that the US Supreme Courtroom, I believe, is simply not going to tolerate.”
Legislators’ feedback
As all three judges acknowledge, Abbott’s feedback matter rather a lot lower than what the Legislature did based mostly on them. Final 12 months, the U.S. Supreme Courtroom held that when making an attempt to separate out partisan gerrymandering from racial affect, courts ought to typically give legislatures the advantage of the doubt.
However Brown discovered “direct proof” that “key legislators … had the identical racial goals as DOJ and the Governor.” He pointed to a press launch from Home Speaker Dustin Burrows that stated the chamber had “delivered laws to redistrict sure congressional districts to deal with issues raised by the Division of Justice,” in addition to interviews from lawmakers the place they pointed to the Petteway ruling because the impetus for the redraw.
Burrows stated in an announcement that he disagrees with the ruling, and expects it to be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Courtroom “briefly order.”
Brown additionally dug into feedback from state Rep. Todd Hunter, the Corpus Christi Republican who carried the invoice that enabled the map. Upon presenting the invoice on the ground of the Texas Home, Hunter walked by the racial make-up of every district, volunteering “with out prompting,” Brown famous, that the brand new map elevated the variety of Hispanic and Black majority districts.
“Chairman Hunter’s flooring statements and exchanges with different legislators recommend that he and the invoice’s joint authors considered the plan’s racial numbers not merely as uncooked statistical information, however as promoting factors of the invoice,” Brown wrote. “He stated it was ‘good,’ ‘nice,’ and a ‘robust message’ that these 4 districts have been majority-Hispanic.”
Brown additionally flagged the rise in districts the place Black or Hispanic voters made up “simply barely a majority” of the eligible voting inhabitants.
“The invoice’s principal proponents purposefully manipulated the districts’ racial numbers to make the map extra palatable,” he wrote. “That’s racial gerrymandering.”
Smith vociferously disagreed, saying none of Brown’s arguments overrode the presumption of fine religion that must be awarded to legislators. He took particular umbrage at Brown’s interpretation of Hunter’s feedback.
“For Choose Brown to insist that [Hunter] harbored inward racial animus on this ambiguous reality sample unfairly paints Hunter, a former democrat, as an unreformed, unrepentant racist sustaining a flagging veneer of partisan nastiness over Strom Thurmond-like segregationism,” Smith wrote. “This upside-down fantasy entertained by Choose Brown is obvious error and justifies reversal.”
Hunter didn’t reply to a request for remark.
A number of lawmakers made feedback that bolstered the partisan argument that the state now argues in courtroom, together with Home Redistricting Committee Chair Cody Vasut, R-Angleton. Smith stated these feedback must be held in equal weight to any feedback from different members of the Legislature, however Brown disagreed.
“We conclude that the contemporaneous statements of legislators concerned within the 2025 redistricting are extra indicative of racial motives than partisan ones,” he wrote.
Kincaid v. King
King, the Senate redistricting committee chair, is among the many legislators who repeatedly claimed the method was motivated by pure partisan targets. However Brown dismissed his feedback on the grounds that he was not as concerned within the course of as Hunter, and since Brown deemed him to be an unreliable witness after he contradicted himself and different witnesses on the stand.
At challenge are King’s communications with Adam Kincaid, the chief director of the Nationwide Republican Redistricting Belief, who drew the map on Texas’ behalf. King and Kincaid met at a convention earlier than redistricting started. By King’s retelling, he explicitly instructed Kincaid he didn’t need to speak about redistricting and by no means requested what number of seats Republicans may achieve; Kincaid stated King spoke brazenly with him concerning the course of at that assembly, together with asking what number of seats the GOP might get.
There have been different inconsistencies between King and Kincaid’s testimonies, which Brown stated indicated one of many two was incorrect, and raised the query of “whether or not something occurred throughout that assembly that will betray an illegal legislative motive.”
Smith agreed that King was the much less dependable narrator, writing that “Kincaid’s remarkably lucid, rapid-fire, and forthright demeanor on the stand — in comparison with King’s calculated demeanor” made it “apparent” that Kincaid was telling the reality.
King didn’t reply to a request for remark.
This text first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
