act test n the most recent Voting Rights Act case before the high court, the justices in 2009 upheld the law in a Texas case but ruled, in a narrowly tailored 8-1 decision, that a utility district in Austin could opt out of the pre-clearance provisions of the act because of its unblemished record free of racial discrimination. There are seven Latinos and three African Americans in Texas’ 32-member House delegation — a total of 23 Republicans and 9 Democrats. Because of the rapid growth of the state’s Mexican-American, African-American and Asian-American population since 2000, the state gained four congressional districts. Civil rights activists say the Voting Rights Act requires the creation of new minority districts to reflect the population shifts, but the GOP plan does not increase minority opportunities.
We think it takes Latinos backward,” says Nina Perales, Vice President for Litigation at the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which proposed to add new Hispanic-majority districts in the Dallas and Houston areas. “For two decades Latinos have comprised more than 60 percent of the state’s growth, and this plan creates no more (Hispanic) opportunity districts than the plan in 1991.” The target of Democratic Party ire is the new congressional redistricting proposal released last week by State Senate Redistricting Committee Chairman Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, after the original plan he co-authored with Texas House Redistricting Committee Chairman Rep. Burt Solomons, R-Carrollton, was greeted by bipartisan derision for the way it shredded the Houston area and East Texas into a jumble of misshapen districts, including one dubbed the “Giant Shrimp.”
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