The ruling states that the 2021 redistricting map, previously called a “textbook” case of racial gerrymandering, is not in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA (August 2, 2024) — Yesterday, the en banc United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, overruled decades of Voting Rights Act (VRA) precedent to reverse our clients’ redistricting victory in the Petteway v. Galveston County case. The Court majority, over a strong dissent, stated that Section 2 of the VRA does not protect the ability of a coalition of racial minority voters to elect the candidate of their choice.
View the ruling here.
The Court ordered the suit back to the district court to resolve our clients’ constitutional claims of racial gerrymandering and intentional discrimination.
The en banc review allowed the entire Court of Appeals to review the case to determine if it should depart from four decades of precedent. Six judges dissented, and five joined a dissent noting, “the majority reaches an atextual and ahistorical conclusion to overturn our own en banc precedent.” The dissenting judges would have upheld precedent and the district court’s finding that it was “stunning how completely the county extinguished the Black and Latino communities’ voice on its own commissioners court during the 2021 redistricting” to order a new map.
“Today the court told the Black and Latino residents of Galveston, who entered this fight together, that they cannot vote as one community,” said Sarah Xiyi Chen (she/her), Senior Supervising Attorney for the Voting Rights Program at the Texas Civil Rights Project. “We are extremely disappointed with this ruling. The Voting Rights Act was designed to protect communities like our clients in Galveston’s former Precinct 3, people who have common interests and face similar threats to silence their voices. We will continue to stand with Galveston residents to fight for victory in the district court, advocate for federal protections for voting rights for all, and to ensure their voices are heard.”
“The Fifth Circuit reversed decades of settled law to deny relief to Black and Latino voters seeking nothing more than equal voting power and a voice in their local government. Plaintiffs proved their case at trial, and in response, the appellate court moved the goalpost,” said Hilary Harris Klein, Senior Voting Rights Counsel at Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ). “SCSJ is committed to continue standing with NAACP, LULAC, and the brave individuals who brought this challenge to seek equal treatment under the law.”
“The Fifth Circuit decision reverses its own precedent in order to make it more difficult for diverse communities to exercise their right to vote. The Court tells Black and Hispanic Americans that their shared harm cannot be adjudication together. In practice this means it often can’t be adjudication at all,” said Nickolas Spencer, Attorney and Counselor at Law, Spencer & Associates, PLLC.
“While we are disappointed in the Fifth Circuit’s ruling, we remain steadfast in our support of our clients’ effort to overturn Galveston County’s discriminatory dilution of their voting rights in violation of the law and the U.S. Constitution,” said Richard Macino, Senior Counsel, Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP.
The district court will have an opportunity to rule on the other claims our clients presented in a two-week bench trial in August 2023 — that Galveston County discriminated against them based on race and intentionally “cracked” them into four different commissioner precincts on the basis of race.
Additional background:
The lawsuit was filed by Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP), Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ), Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, and Spencer & Associates, PLLC in 2022 on behalf of three Galveston-area branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (“NAACP”) and the local council for the League of United Latin American Citizens (“LULAC”), and three individual civil rights leaders, Edna Courville, Joe Compian, and the late Leon Phillips. The lawsuit was consolidated with similar suits by the U.S. Department of Justice and by other civil rights groups on behalf of local leaders Terry Petteway, Penny Pope, and Derreck Rose. Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP joined as counsel for the appeal process.
The district court previously found that the 2021 map “summarily carved up and wiped off the map” Galveston County’s Historic Precinct 3, the sole majority-minority commissioners precinct in the County electing the sole minority commissioner for decades. The district court also credited testimony for Plaintiffs’ experts that this map is a “textbook” racial gerrymander that would provide zero chance for Black and Latino voters to elect a candidate of their choice in a county.
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About Texas Civil Rights Project
The Texas Civil Rights Project is boldly serving the movement for equality and justice in and out of the courts. We use our tools of litigation and legal advocacy to protect and advance the civil rights of everyone in Texas, and we partner with communities across the state to serve the rising movement for social justice. We undertake our work with a vision of a Texas in which all communities can thrive with dignity, justice and without fear.
About Southern Coalition for Social Justice
Southern Coalition for Social Justice, founded in 2007, partners with communities of color and economically disadvantaged communities in the South to defend and advance their political, social, and economic rights through the combination of legal advocacy, research, organizing, and communications. Learn more at southerncoalition.org and follow our work on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
About Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP
Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP is an international law firm of approximately 1,000 attorneys with offices in Brussels, Chicago, Frankfurt, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Milan, New York, Palo Alto, Paris, Rome, San Francisco and Washington.