The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has decided to rehear a notable gerrymandering case from Galveston County, Texas, en banc. In this context, en banc refers to the full bench of judges from the Fifth Circuit, who will assemble to rehear arguments.
The central issue of this case circles around an alleged violation of the Voting Rights Act. Petitioners have argued that the voting clout of a substantial number of Galveston County’s Black and Hispanic voters has been unjustly diluted by legislators.
For the past two decades, one of the four voting districts in Galveston County has been comprised of 58 percent of the Black and Hispanic population. These majority-minority districts, where at least 51 percent of the populace belongs to a minority group, have been protected under the Voting Rights Act. This Act deems it illegal to dilute these minority communities to minimize their voting influence, a maneuver broadly referred to as “gerrymandering.”
In 2021, the Galveston County Commissioners Court put forth a newly redistricted plan. However, the redrawn map did not include the majority-minority Black and Hispanic voting district. As a result, petitioners Terry Petteway, Derrick Rose and Penny Pope brought a lawsuit against Galveston County.
In their complaint, the petitioners claimed that the county infringed upon Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which condems the repression of voting rights based on race. The lower court ruled in favor of the petitioners, but Galveston County appealed. During the appeal process, the Fifth Circuit claimed an error of law in the district court’s judgement. Despite agreeing that the lower court suitably applied their judicial precedent, the Appeals court decided that this very precedent was at odds with the objectives of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Consequently, a decision was made to rehear the case en banc.
While the dilution of a majority-minority district comprising a single racial minority is regarded as gerrymandering, the Fifth Circuit maintained that it’s not gerrymandering to diminish a majority-minority district wherein no single racial minority group makes up 51 percent of the voting population. It was noted in the court record for this case that all parties concurred that neither the Black nor Hispanic voting communities in the contested district individually constituted more than 51 percent of the population.
The diverging opinions among circuit courts regarding whether or not to acknowledge these “aggregate racial minority” claims as violations of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has been a notable aspect of this case. Some courts have upheld these claims, while others have refuted them. As such legal proceedings carry on concerning gerrymandering cases, the decision in the Galveston County case comes amidst a slew of federal gerrymandering cases in Alabama, Georgia, and other southern states.