Stadiums and hospitals removed from the districts of black congressional members and country clubs newly drawn into those of white incumbents. A lawyer emailing "No bueno" to a Republican staffer about plans that risked leaving a paper trail and jeopardizing the legality of a voting map.
Those were among the evidence a Washington federal court used to determine that Texas Republican lawmakers discriminated against minorities while drawing new political boundaries, throwing out the maps as violations of the Voting Rights Act but likely not in time to affect the November elections.
The decision Tuesday by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is instead likely to reverberate in 2014, when some Texans could find their congressional and statehouse districts changed for the third time in five years.
The long-awaited ruling was hailed as a sweeping victory by minority rights groups that sued the state after the Republican-controlled Legislature pushed through new redistricting maps last year. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott called the decision "flawed" and vowed to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. |
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