This one has an interesting twist.
The League of Women Voters of Tarrant County and the League of United Latin American Citizens are suing Tarrant County, the county’s commissioners court and County Judge Tim O’Hare over its mid-decade districting.
The two groups claim in a lawsuit filed Thursday the “secretive, rushed process” violates the Texas Open Meetings Act, purposely discriminates against Black and Latino voters and O’Hare as well as most of the commissioners violated the state constitution.
“In Tarrant County, a county with more residents of color than white residents, the Tarrant County Commissioners adopted a precinct map that dilutes the power of those residents of color, over the objections of the community,” said Janet Mattern, president of the League of Women Voters of Tarrant County. “This is illegal and is something the League will not stand for.”
[…]
The suit says in 2021, the Commissioners Court conducted a redistricting review of its commissioners’ precincts by “explicitly adopted criteria.’ The criteria, among several rules, required any new map to “avoid racial gerrymandering” and “have compact and contiguous precincts,” according to the suit.
The precincts at the time were “evenly distributed” amid recent population growth, according to the suit, and says the Commissioners Court voted 4-1 to keep that electoral map in place until the 2030 Census.
It claims the commissioners, led by O’Hare, ignored the criteria with its proposed redistricting efforts in April.
“There was no new census data or apparent triggering event to justify this abrupt decision,” the suit read.
O’Hare hired the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative law firm to redraw the lines of the four commissioners court precincts. Each Tarrant County commissioner represents one geographic precinct, except for the county judge, who represents the whole county.
The suit claims PILF’s aid helped quicken the process behind closed doors by not providing publicly adopted redistricting criteria or public drawing sessions. Five proposed maps were submitted to commissioners in May and then released to the public by Democratic Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons, who previously said are an attempt to draw her out of her seat. Two more proposed maps were submitted at the end of May.
This is the second such lawsuit filed over Tarrant’s extracurricular redistricting effort – see here, here, and here for the background. The main difference here is the inclusion of the Open Meeting Act allegations. Those are illuminating, but I don’t know how useful they are in getting an injunction against this map. The rest of it sounds familiar, and based on past experience I’d expect these two suits to be combined at some point.
And just to reiterate what I said before, yes I know that Harris County was similarly aggressive in turning its Commissioners Court precincts into a 3-1 advantage for Democrats. Assuming that Tarrant County Commissioners Court didn’t violate the Voting Rights Act in its redraw – and assuming that SCOTUS hasn’t turned the VRA into toilet paper by the time this gets to a courtroom – then that is a thing they can do. But Harris County did its business at the normal time, following the 2020 Census, while Tarrant County decided it didn’t need to redistrict since the precinct populations were sufficiently in balance. As the 2020 Census would still be in use now, they have no justification beyond “we felt like it” to do this now. Make of that what you will.