The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a decades-old precedent that allows different racial and ethnic groups to form coalitions to seek legal remedies under the Voting Rights Act. The ruling — which only applies to the states within the 5th Circuit: Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi — will likely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 2021, the Republican-majority government of Galveston County, Texas redrew its political boundaries to eliminate the one district in which non-white voters represented a majority. A group of current and former officeholders sued, charging that violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bans racial gerrymandering. They were joined by multiple civil rights groups and the Biden administration, in a case that was consolidated as Petteway v. Galveston County.
The county argued that neither Blacks nor Latinos alone constituted an outright majority anywhere in its boundaries and that Section 2 does not protect the rights of different racial or ethnic groups to form coalitions.
On Thursday, the U.S. 5th Circuit ruled 12-5 in favor of Galveston County, throwing out a precedent its own judges had set in 1988, Campos v. City of Baytown.
"After reconsidering Campos en banc, this court holds that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act does not authorize separately protected minority groups to aggregate their populations for purposes of a vote dilution claim," said Judge Edith H. Jones, writing for the majority.
Leading the dissent, Judge Dana M. Douglas wrote, "Today, the majority finally dismantled the effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act in this circuit, leaving four decades of en banc precedent flattened in its wake."
The 5th Circuit remanded the case to the district court for reconsideration. That district court had originally ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and had redrawn Galveston County's political maps to comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act when county leaders failed to do so.
The ruling comes just over a year after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, in a case involving racial gerrymandering of congressional districts.
Valencia Richardson, an attorney with the Campaign Legal Center representing the plaintiffs, told Houston Public Media, “We’re disappointed with this decision, which not only ignores decades of legal precedent but also the language of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We’re considering next steps at this time.”
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