Contact: press@lawyerscommittee.org
WASHINGTON, D.C. –The U.S. Supreme Court granted the State of Texas’s request to stay a federal court ruling in a case brought by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Texas NAACP, and other groups against Texas for adopting a racially discriminatory redistricting map. As a result of the Supreme Court’s action, the 2025 map will remain in place.
Damon T. Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law issued this statement:
“This ruling is a serious blow to people of color in Texas. Bowing to the will of the Trump administration, Texas politicians publicly said they intended to dismantle majority-minority districts. In other words, they openly targeted Black and brown communities. A majority of lower-court judges who heard the case agreed that this move likely amounted to unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. Yet, here we are with an election around the corner and the Supreme Court is allowing Texas to use these sinister maps. Requiring Black and Brown Texans to vote under a racially gerrymandered plan sends the message that voting rights and the Constitution’s protections can be rendered meaningless in the face of entrenched power, so long as politicians claim it’s partisan and not racial. Both the people of Texas and the lower court could see right through that facade. The Supreme Court should have done the same.”
Robert Weiner, voting rights project director at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and former senior counsel in the civil rights division of the Department of Justice, issued this statement:
“We’re disappointed with the ruling today. This means that the 2026 Congressional elections will use maps that intentionally dismantled majority-minority districts. That is an injustice beyond words. Those maps shouldn’t have been drawn in the first place. The Court’s failure to understand this fact is a sad commentary on its lapsed commitment to protecting voting rights.”
“This subversion of the democratic process harms all of us, but it especially hurts people of color.”
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