Federal appeals court agrees to rehear Texas gerrymandering case – JURIST

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit agreed on Friday to rehear a gerrymandering case out of Galveston County, Texas, en banc—meaning the full bench of judges from the Fifth Circuit will sit to rehear arguments. The case centers around a potential Voting Rights Act violation in which the petitioners argued that legislators unfairly diluted the voting influence of a majority of the county’s Black and Hispanic voters.

For twenty years, one of the four voting districts in Galveston County has been composed of 58 percent of the Black and Hispanic population. Majority-minority districts are voting districting in which at least 51 percent of the population belonging to a minority group. Under the Voting Rights Act, it is unlawful to dilute these minority populations for the sake of minimizing their voting influence. The practice of doing so is what is commonly referred to as “gerrymandering.”

In 2021, the Galveston County Commissioners Court implemented a new districting plan. The re-drawn map did not contain the majority-minority Black and Hispanic voting district. Because of this, petitioners Terry Petteway, Derrick Rose and Penny Pope filed suit against Galveston County.

The petitioners’ complaint claimed the county violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which provides against abridging voting rights based on race. The district court ruled in favor of the petitioners, and Galveston County appealed. On appeal, the Fifth Circuit said that the district court opinion was an error of law. While the Fifth Circuit found that the district court correctly applied their judicial precedent, the court found that that very same judicial precedent was inconsistent with the intent of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Because of this, the Fifth Circuit called for the case to be reheard en banc.

Though diluting a majority-minority district composed of one racial minority is considered gerrymandering, the Fifth Circuit has argued it is not gerrymandering to dilute a majority-minority district where none of the racial minorities on their own compose of 51 percent of the voting population. According to the court record, all parties to this case agreed that neither the Black nor Hispanic voting populations in the contested district make up over 51 percent of the population on their own.

The circuit courts are split on whether to allow allow these type of aggregate racial minority claims for Section 2 violations of the Voting Rights Act. Some courts have ruled in favor of them, while others have denied them. The decision in the Galveston County case comes amid a wave of federal gerrymandering cases in Alabama, Georgia, and other southern states.