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Texas
Redistricting Ruling a Victory for Equal Rights
By Marc Levin, Esq.
[email protected]
Texas
Democrats searching for a respite from redistricting first sought shelter in
Oklahoma and New Mexico. When that failed, they sought refuge in court under the
Voting Rights Act. Now, a panel of three federal judges has finally stifled the
Democrats' attempt to obstruct a redistricting plan approved by a majority of
elected officeholders.
The
panel correctly recognized that Republican backers of the new map were
motivated not by racism, but by partisanship, just like their Democrat
counterparts in 1990. The Democrats over a decade ago used creative drawing
to gerrymander a map that has given Democrats a majority of Congressional
seats even as 60% of Texans vote Republican for Congress. While
redistricting in the future should be done by a computer to avoid such
partisan rancor, today's Democrats are simply getting some of their own
medicine.
More importantly, the three-judge panel should be praised for not allowing
entrenched white Democrat incumbents to use the federal Voting Rights Act as
a smokescreen to save their jobs. This was the primary goal of the
litigation, as it was undisputed that the new plan did not reduce the number
of majority-minority districts.
State Sen. Rodney Ellis (D-Houston) claimed, "the state is saying we
must forfeit our rights because we are smart enough to vote for candidates
who represent our interests because they happen to be Democrats." In
other words, if minorities are placed in districts where a Democrat is not
elected, they have lost their right to vote, according to Ellis. Under
Ellis' formulation, the right to vote and the "right" to be
represented in Congress by a Democrat are one and the same.
However, the purpose of the Voting Rights Act was to ensure that minorities,
and in particular blacks, were not denied the right to vote either through
prohibition or thinly veiled discriminatory measures such as poll taxes and
literacy tests. Unfortunately, the Act has been misconstrued by some federal
courts to guarantee that racial minorities live in districts where the
candidate of their choice will always be elected.
This argument wrongly assumes that all minorities are Democrats and can only
be
adequately represented by Democrats. In California, 41 percent of Hispanics
voted for Republicans Arnold Schwarzenegger or Tom McClintock, and a
majority of Hispanics earning more than $60,000 voted for one of the two
Republicans. Some 50 percent of Texas Hispanics cast their votes for George
W. Bush for governor in 1998.
No one should have a right, by virtue of their race or ethnicity, to live in
a district in which the candidate of their choice always wins. No such
special treatment has been accorded to religious minorities, gays, or other
types of minorities. At most, the Voting Rights Act sought to give blacks
this special right temporarily to compensate for years of
disenfranchisement, but Jim Crow laws are history and the Act should be
clarified to reflect societal progress on civil rights.
Interestingly, even the one judge on the panel who dissented, U.S. District
Judge John T. Ward, an appointee of former President Clinton, found the new
map did not discriminate against blacks. Instead, he ruled only that House
District 23, now served by Republican Henry Bonilla, violated the Voting
Rights Act because its new construction was slightly less Hispanic. However,
Hispanics still account for more than 50 percent of the district.
Unlike blacks, Hispanics have never been denied the right to vote in Texas.
Consequently, it is quite remarkable that a district becoming 4.2 percent
less Hispanic, while still remaining a majority Hispanic district, could be
viewed by one federal judge as reason sufficient to throw out a
redistricting plan duly approved by Texas' elected officials.
Judge Ward cited statistics showing most Hispanics in the district did not
support Bonilla in 2002. However, this is misleading because Bonilla is from
the mostly white San Antonio suburbs while his Democrat opponent in 2002,
former State Rep. Henry Cuellar, came from Laredo, the centerpiece of the
southern, mostly Hispanic portion of the district.
Ironically, the ruling by the three-judge panel is a victory for diversity,
a value liberals so often trumpet. Rather than being shoehorned into
minority-dominated districts, minorities who are Democrats can benefit by
being united with their white, mostly Republican neighbors in one
Congressional district. Conversely, white voters and elected officials can
learn more about the needs and interests of minorities. Rather than carve
out partisan political fiefdoms based on race and ethnicity, Texans should
unite as one at the ballot box and elect leaders of both parties who will
ably serve constituents of all races.
Marc A. Levin, Esq. is Associate Editor of The Austin Review (www.austinreview.com),
a conservative monthly journal, and a former law clerk on the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He can be reached at [email protected].
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