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Galveston County will use an electoral map that a federal judge determined violated the Voting Rights Act after the U.S Supreme Court declined to intervene in the case Tuesday.
The decision comes after U.S. District Judge Jeffrey V. Brown found that the county’s precinct map “denies Black and Latino voters the equal opportunity to participate in the political process and the opportunity to elect a representative of their choice to the commissioners court,” in October.
Galveston County appealed the ruling and won a reprieve from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which overruled Brown and said that officials didn’t have to redraw the county’s voting map. The U.S. Supreme Court decision not to intervene means the appellate court’s ruling stands.
Three justices – Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Kentaji Brown Jackson – dissented, saying the appellate court “went far beyond its property authority” by allowing the county’s unlawful electoral map to proceed.
The Supreme Court’s decision will simply embolden politicians to use the same tactics as Galveston County, said Joaquin Gonzalez, senior supervising attorney for the Voting Rights Program at the Texas Civil Rights Project, which represented the plaintiffs who sued the county.
“We are disappointed in today’s ruling,” Gonzalez said. “The residents of Galveston have fought against this map since it was proposed and they deserve to have a resolution. This ruling emboldens more politicians to try the same tactics that the Galveston Commissioners used to create this blatantly discriminatory map.
“We will continue fighting for Galveston residents to have a fair shot to influence the decisions that shape their community,” he added.
Representatives for Galveston County could not be immediately reached for comment.
On Nov. 12, 2021, the Galveston County Commissioner’s Court voted to adopt a map where Black and Hispanic voters did not make up the majority of any precinct despite making up about 40 percent of the county’s total population. Under this new adopted map, white voters made up about 60 percent of the eligible voting pool in each precinct, according to the initial lawsuit filed by voting rights advocates.
Commissioner Stephen Holmes has represented Precinct 3 since 1999, which previously consisted of the county’s sole non-white voting majority – near 58 percent – and represented cities such as La Marque, Dickinson and parts of Texas City.
The newly adopted 2021 map shifted Precinct 3 to the northern border of the county and consisted of predominantly white voters. Under this new map, minority voters made up less than a third of Precinct 3.
The decision by the Supreme Court to not intervene will likely lead to Holmes’ defeat in the 2024 election.
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