from the the-meritocracy-at-work dept
Let’s say, hypothetically, you need to gerrymander some congressional districts to assist your social gathering win extra seats. Listed here are a few choices:
- Do blatant partisan gerrymandering, which is cynical and corrupt however typically (tragically and sadly) completely authorized below present US regulation.
- Do racial gerrymandering, which will certainly get you sued and possibly lose in court docket for violating the pretty clear Voting Rights Act restrictions on racial classifications.
Which do you select? In case you mentioned “clearly possibility 1,” congratulations, you perceive the regulation higher than the Trump administration’s Division of Justice. As a result of the Trump administration simply acquired legally smacked down for selecting possibility 2.
Trump’s broader redistricting push kicked off partisan gerrymandering efforts throughout the nation, together with in California the place voters overwhelmingly handed a poll measure (Prop 50) to briefly redistrict solely to counteract Texas’ gerrymandering. That measure initially included a provision that it might solely go into impact if Texas went by means of with its plan, however that provision was eliminated earlier than the vote. The (unlikely, however immediately potential) finish outcome now may be that California gerrymanders, whereas Texas doesn’t. Oops.
When Trump first demanded that Texas redistrict to cease Democrats from successful seats within the Home, Texas Republicans initially balked. That is now long-forgotten historical past, nevertheless it’s true. They had been a bit apprehensive about how all this may go over.
The push from Washington has unnerved some Texas Republicans, who fear that remodeling the boundaries of Texas Home seats to show Democratic districts crimson by including reliably Republican voters from neighboring Republican districts may backfire in an election that’s already anticipated to favor Democrats.
However then Trump’s crew of authorized geniuses discovered an progressive resolution: they reframed their partisan gerrymandering as a civil rights crucial, thereby remodeling a authorized (if obnoxious) political maneuver into an unlawful racial classification scheme.
The mastermind behind this technique was Harmeet Dhillon, Trump’s option to run the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. (You would possibly bear in mind Dhillon from her earlier profession submitting lawsuits on behalf of aggrieved conservatives who felt insufficiently appreciated.) However her letter to Texas officers demanding race-based redistricting represents a brand new stage of tradition war-driven authorized incompetence.
It’s actually value appreciating simply how silly and counterproductive this letter was, as is laid out by the choose on this case.
Choose Brown—who clerked for present Texas Governor Greg Abbott when Abbott was on the Texas Supreme Courtroom and who beforehand blocked Biden’s COVID vaccine mandate—is hardly what anybody would name an “activist leftist choose.” Which makes his scathing evaluation of the Trump administration’s strategy all of the extra damning.
As a result of these Texas legislators had been so hesitant, Dhillon despatched them a letter attempting to argue that the state was violating civil rights legal guidelines in the event that they didn’t redistrict alongside racial strains, and that apparently kicked off all this nonsense.
Choose Brown identified how absurd all that is:
Earlier this 12 months, President Trump started urging Texas to redraw its U.S. Home map to create 5 further Republican seats. Lawmakers reportedly met that request to redistrict on purely partisan grounds with apprehension. When the Governor introduced his intent to name a particular legislative session, he didn’t even place redistricting on the legislative agenda.
However when the Trump Administration reframed its request as a requirement to redistrict congressional seats primarily based on their racial make-up, Texas lawmakers instantly jumped on board. On July 7, Harmeet Dhillon, the pinnacle of the Civil Rights Division on the Division of Justice (“DOJ”), despatched a letter (“the DOJ Letter”) to the Governor and Legal professional Normal of Texas making the legally incorrect assertion that 4 congressional districts in Texas had been “unconstitutional” as a result of they had been “coalition districts”—majority-non-White districts through which no single racial group constituted a 50% majority. Within the letter, DOJ threatened authorized motion if Texas didn’t instantly dismantle and redraw these districts—a risk primarily based solely on their racial make-up. Notably, the DOJ Letter focused solely majority-non-White districts. Any point out of majority-White Democrat districts—which DOJ presumably would have additionally focused if its goals had been partisan slightly than racial—was conspicuously absent.
So let’s be clear about what occurred right here. Texas Republicans had been reluctant to do a simple partisan gerrymander. Then the Trump DOJ got here alongside and mentioned “really, you need to do that due to race,” and immediately everybody was enthusiastic. The racist incompetence is staggering.
As soon as Dhillon gave them the racial justification, Texas instantly jumped on board:
Two days later, citing the DOJ Letter, the Governor added redistricting to the particular session’s legislative agenda. In doing so, the Governor explicitly directed the Legislature to attract a brand new U.S. Home map to resolve DOJ’s considerations. In different phrases, the Governor explicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict primarily based on race. In press appearances, the Governor plainly and expressly disavowed any partisan goal and as a substitute repeatedly said that his objective was to eradicate coalition districts and create new majority-Hispanic districts.
Extremely, the MAGA GOP simply saved admitting again and again that they did this for racial causes:
The invoice’s sponsors’ statements recommend they adopted these modifications as a result of such a map could be a better promote than a purely partisan one. The Speaker of the Home additionally issued a press launch celebrating that the invoice satisfactorily addressed DOJ’s “considerations.” Different high-ranking legislators said in media interviews that the Legislature had redistricted not for the political objective of appeasing President Trump nor of gaining 5 Republican U.S. Home seats, however to realize DOJ’s racial objective of eliminating coalition districts.
Their very own flimsy excuse remodeled what would have been authorized (if cynical) partisan gerrymandering into unlawful racial gerrymandering, violating the Voting Rights Act. They actually had been so determined to lie in regards to the unpalatable causes for his or her gerrymandering that they moved from the obnoxious and corrupt model to the blatantly unlawful justification. And didn’t even cease to assume which may sink your entire enterprise.
You know the way they are saying “the coverup is worse than the crime?” Effectively, right here, it’s principally simply the coverup that’s the crime. If they’d simply performed this for the actual causes they had been possible doing this (to stifle Democrats), it had a a lot greater probability of passing judicial muster.
Choose Brown, for his half, appears nearly personally offended by the standard of Dhillon’s authorized work. He publishes her complete letter within the ruling, after which writes:
It’s difficult to unpack the DOJ Letter as a result of it incorporates so many factual, authorized, and typographical errors. Certainly, even attorneys employed by the Texas Legal professional Normal—who professes to be a political ally of the Trump Administration—describe the DOJ Letter as “legally[] unsound,” “baseless,” “inaccurate,” “ham-fisted,” and “a large number.”
Don’t maintain again now.
The choose walks by means of each little bit of the letter and simply how ridiculous it’s. Right here’s only a snippet, nevertheless it goes on like this for some time:
Legally and factually, DOJ had no legitimate argument that the Legislature ought to restore the Home map to some preexisting racial equilibrium since Petteway supplanted Campos. Removed from in search of to “rectify . . . racial gerrymandering,” the DOJ Letter urges Texas to inject racial concerns into what Texas insists was a race-blind course of.
However what about DOJ’s assertion that “TX-33 is [a] racially-based coalition district that resulted from a federal court docket order years in the past”? If a court docket compelled Texas to attract CD 33 as a coalition district primarily based on Campos’s discredited interpretation of VRA § 2, can’t the Legislature redraw that district now that VRA § 2 now not requires coalition districts?
The quick reply is that that is one other one of many DOJ Letter’s many inaccuracies.
Because the Choose explains, if Dhillon and the Trump administration had simply advised them to go for blatantly partisan redistricting, it might need labored. However they didn’t.
Right here too, if the Governor had explicitly directed the Legislature to amend the congressional map to enhance Republican efficiency, the Plaintiff Teams would then face a better burden to show that the motivation for the 2025 redistricting was racial slightly than political. As an alternative, by incorporating DOJ’s race-based redistricting request by reference, the Governor was asking the Legislature to provide DOJ the racial rebalancing it wished—and for the explanations that DOJ cited.
Take into consideration the strategic incompetence right here. Everybody concerned was apparently so determined to keep away from saying “we’re doing partisan gerrymandering” that they saved loudly asserting “we’re doing racial gerrymandering as a substitute!” They traded a in all probability authorized (if obnoxious) justification for an clearly unlawful (and nonetheless terrible) one.
When given a chance to publicly proclaim that his motivation for including redistricting to the legislative agenda was solely to enhance Republicans’ electoral prospects at President Trump’s request, the Governor denied any such motivation. As an alternative, the Governor expressly said that his predominant motivation was racial: he “wished to take away . . . coalition districts” and “present extra seats for Hispanics.” The truth that the racially reconfigured districts would occur to favor Republicans was, to paraphrase the Governor’s personal phrases, only a fortuitous coincidence.
Essentially the most exceptional a part of all this? Texas Legal professional Normal Ken Paxton really tried to avoid wasting them. He despatched a letter to the Trump administration primarily pushing again on Dhillon’s calls for, whereas saying “hey, you already know we may simply do that for partisan causes, proper? That will be authorized?” However they had been so purchased into the racism that no person listened.
On the identical time the Governor was asserting the 2025 Map’s racial goals to the press, the Legal professional Normal of Texas was saying the alternative. Simply two days after the Governor added redistricting to the legislative agenda primarily based on DOJ’s “constitutional considerations,” the Legal professional Normal despatched DOJ a response to its letter. That response mentioned primarily the identical factor we are saying above—that the change in regulation effected by Petteway forged little doubt on the legality of the 2021 Map, since there’s no indication that the 2021 Legislature drew any coalition districts for legal-compliance causes that it wouldn’t have drawn anyway for race-neutral causes like partisanship. Though the Legal professional Normal doesn’t say so explicitly, the aim behind his letter seems to have been to refocus the redistricting dialogue towards permissible concerns like partisanship, politics, and conventional districting standards—and away from legally fraught concerns like race.
If that was the letter’s function, it didn’t work.
Only a implausible stage of failure throughout.
Once more, this isn’t some “activist leftist choose” as MAGA would have you ever imagine—we’ve already established Brown’s conservative credentials.
Now, the case goes straight to the Supreme Courtroom (skipping the Fifth Circuit), and Paxton has already introduced plans to attraction shortly. He’s claiming the map is “solely authorized,” which is a daring stance on condition that his personal workplace tried to warn everybody this was unlawful. However Paxton’s capability for hypocrisy has by no means been his limiting issue.
Will the Supreme Courtroom overrule Choose Brown? It’s solely potential—maybe possible. The Courtroom has spent a lot of the previous 12 months rubber-stamping Trump administration priorities, typically with out a lot rationalization. However Choose Brown clearly wrote this opinion with the Supreme Courtroom in thoughts, and particularly with Chief Justice John Roberts in thoughts. He opens your entire ruling by quoting Roberts’ personal 2007 opinion about race-based classifications:
“The way in which to cease discrimination on the premise of race is to cease discriminating on the premise of race.”
Will that persuade any of the motivated SCOTUS Justices to confess to what’s happening right here? Maybe not, however they’ll must bend over backwards to disregard what’s occurred right here, on condition that the Trump administration served up the unlawful foundation for this choice on a silver platter for all concerned.
Filed Below: donald trump, gerrymandering, greg abbott, harmeet dhillon, jeffrey brown, ken paxton, on the premise of race, texas, voting rights act
