Texas Admits to Partisan Gerrymandering as Legal Defense
By In an article that I’d have thought I wrote if the byline hadn’t told me otherwise, Allen Clifton at Forward Progressives is suitably amused by the legal strategy of the State of Texas to avoid having the entire state returned to DoJ pre-clearance under the VRA. According to a brief filed last week, Texas is claiming that it discriminates against Democrats, not against any given race. Clifton outlines the hilarity that ensues:
Another part of Texas’ argument seems to be that even if their new voting laws do happen to disenfranchise minorities—it’s really not that big of a deal. Because the events of the 1960′s were much worse.
Let that sink in for a moment.
A state openly admitting that they redrew district maps to purposely split up and weaken the Democratic vote (something we all knew Republicans were doing but had yet to hear admitted publicly), claiming that even if their new voting laws did happen to disenfranchise minorities from voting that it isn’t that big of a big deal because “the 60′s were much worse.”
Basically, “Yes, we’ve been trying to rig elections along partisan lines and even if our new laws might target minorities in a way—at least we’re not doing what they did in the 1960′s.”
I wasn’t sure what to do with this — yes, of course Texas gerrymanders and heaps of Republicans win because of it. So too have some Democratic states. Yes, this will have a marginal effect in 2014 and beyond. This isn’t news to LGM readers. But the brilliance (or desperation) evident in this admission as a means of distracting attention from the larger sin is worthy of note. I understand just enough US Constitutional Law to know when I’m wading into the deep end (and to offer my students at an English university three weeks worth of lectures as an introduction), and this has me curious — cunningly clever or desperately clutching?
Obviously the argument “we might be wrong, but we were way, way wronger in the 1950s and 1960s” shouldn’t fly. However, where race is a protected class, partisanship is not. Can Texas get away with the ‘race as unfortunate collateral damage in our war against the Democratic Party’ argument?
