A group of Tarrant County residents who sued over the county’s redistricting process did not prove the new map is racially discriminatory, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
Tarrant County’s Republican commissioners pushed through an unusual mid-decade redistricting process earlier this year. They argued their plan was to grow their majority on the court, and race had nothing to do with it. Critics said the new map illegally diluted the power of Black and brown voters, packing them into a single precinct.
The county has been sued twice over the new map, and judges have declined to block the maps in both cases. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision in the first lawsuit, Jackson et. al. v. Tarrant County, in a ruling Wednesday.
The judges acknowledged that Black and Latino voters were disproportionately affected by redistricting, but that doesn’t prove commissioners had racially discriminatory intent, they decided.
“An obvious explanation for the disparity exists: race and partisanship are highly correlated in Tarrant County, and districting decisions driven by partisanship will often have disparate racial effects,” the ruling reads.
The judges also dismissed the argument that Republican County Judge Tim O’Hare’s remarks in an interview with NBC 5 about redistricting proved any racial intent.
“The policies of Democrats continue to fail Black people over and over and over, but many of them keep voting them in,” O’Hare said. “It’s time for people of all races to understand the Democrats are a lost party, they are a radical party, it’s time for them to get on board with us and we’ll welcome them with open arms.”
That statement seems to be an expression of ordinary partisan politics, the court ruled.
See here for some background. The plaintiffs also failed to get a restraining order in the state lawsuit. There may be an appeal for that one going on, but if so I wouldn’t expect a different outcome. The simple fact is that discriminatory effect is a lot easier to prove than discriminatory intent – “intent” in any legal context is always hard to prove – and so as long as “intent” is the standard for these lawsuits, they’re going to be hard to win. That’s one of the outcomes of the SCOTUS kneecapping of the Voting Rights Act. Sadly, this is nothing new.
One side point of interest:
The lawsuit also argued some voters would be disenfranchised by being forced to wait to vote in their next county commissioner race. Commissioners serve for four years, but their terms are staggered – meaning some people who would have voted for their commissioner in 2026 have to wait until 2028 under the new maps.
That’s a natural consequence of redistricting, the Fifth Circuit decided.
As noted before, a similar claim was raised by plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed against the Harris County redistricting in 2021. That lawsuit didn’t proceed after the State Supreme Court refused to intercede. I don’t think it’s still an active matter, but now we have a legal opinion on the subject. Federal court, not state court, so not the same thing, but it’s still a precedent now.