This is the second lawsuit that has been filed in the state of Texas related to the Census and redistricting. And to think, we don’t even have a map produced by the Redistricting Committee yet.
A group of Hispanic lawmakers has filed a lawsuit against Gov. Rick Perry and the state of Texas, seeking to halt redistricting activities based on what they say are flawed and discriminatory undercounts of Hispanics during the 2010 U.S. Census.
The lawsuit by the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, filed Tuesday in Hidalgo County, alleges census officials missed 4 percent to 8 percent of the population with their special door-to-door counts in low-income colonias, unincorporated shantytowns settled largely by illegal immigrants.
The suit would apply to decennial redistricting maps currently being drawn for the Legislature, Congress and the State Board of Education.
An accurate count would mean more state and federal representation for Hispanic border and urban areas, including Cameron and Starr counties, as well as areas of Dallas and Houston, MALC spokeswoman Christina Gomez said.
There’s more on the story in The Monitor, and you can see a copy of the lawsuit here. The first lawsuit was filed in February by a group of North Texas voters who claim that only citizen populations should be used to draw legislative boundaries. You can see that lawsuit here, and there are some good comments noting the legal history of such claims in this Trib story. The irony, as noted by several people, is that if you remove undocumented immigrants from the population count, Texas surely would not have gotten four more Congressional seats. Anyway, the game is officially on, and there are likely to be more lawsuits before the inevitable one that directly challenges whatever maps are ratified (if any are) gets filed. Years ending in one are such fun.