If the proposal is approved by the Senate, it will head to the Texas House. House lawmakers were scheduled to consider the redistricting proposal on Aug. 4, but they did not have enough members present to conduct official business after dozens of House Democrats left the state to protest the planned vote.
State leaders have threatened to vacate the seats of House Democrats who are still absent when the chamber reconvenes at 1 p.m. Aug. 8.
Gov. Greg Abbott sued House Democratic Caucus Chair Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, on Aug. 5, asking the state Supreme Court to remove him from office for “deliberately [fleeing] the state to abandon his official duties indefinitely.” The court directed Wu to file an official response to the governor's lawsuit by 5 p.m. Aug. 8, according to previous Community Impact reporting.
“There's been a lot of activity on the House side, but today, we are focused on our job at hand for the Senate, which is to address the bill before us,” Senate redistricting committee chair Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, said Aug. 7.
The overview
During a roughly four-hour Senate hearing Aug. 7, dozens of Texans testified about their concerns with the proposed congressional map, which Republicans have said is aimed at flipping up to five Democratic-held U.S. House seats. According to committee data, 117 people registered in opposition to the map and three people registered in favor of it, although not all registrants testified.
The Senate redistricting committee voted 6-1 to send the proposal to the Senate floor, with Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston, marked as present but not voting.
“This is a farce. This is racism,” Miles said before the Aug. 7 committee vote. “This is discriminatory, and I will not take part in it.”
Texas Democrats have said the proposed congressional map would split up certain historically Black and Hispanic districts and “dilute” the voting power of minority communities, while Republicans have asserted that race was not a factor when congressional districts were redrawn.
State Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, filed the redistricting plan on July 30, and King filed an identical proposal on Aug. 4. King told the Senate committee Aug. 7 that he decided to file the same map because it “complies with the law” and would allow Texans to “elect more Republicans to the U.S. Congress.”
“I think it's totally inappropriate to take racial considerations into account when drawing a map,” King said Aug. 7. “All the testimony that's been suggesting that this map was drawn on a racial basis is inaccurate and incorrect. So I'm disregarding that part of the testimony, because I didn't take race into account, and I don't see race in this map.”
Miles disagreed, arguing that the map would “reduce [Black Texans’] ability to have representation from two to one” by packing voters of color into districts in the Houston area and spreading them throughout others.
“You cannot keep saying the process is race-blind when it affects Black and brown communities so drastically,” Miles said. “This is all about race. You have packed and cracked our districts so much that they look like Humpty Dumpty.”
King said he thought the proposed map would also make Texas’ congressional districts “more compact.” He pointed to TX-35, a Central Texas district served by U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin. Under Texas’ current congressional map, drawn in 2021, Casar’s district runs along I-35 and stretches from south San Antonio to north Austin.
Under the proposed map, TX-35 would cover southern Bexar County and all of Guadalupe, Karnes and Wilson counties. Casar told House lawmakers Aug. 1 that he was concerned the map was drawn with out-of-state interests in mind.
“It's clear to me that these maps aren't drawn by anybody from Texas,” Casar said. “The southern suburbs of Austin and Hays County that I currently proudly represent, they have been drawn out to Port Aransas. There's northern parts of Austin drawn to northeast Texas; western parts of Austin drawn out to Midland-Odessa.”
“Under this new map, someone in the White House—not Texas—wants to move me into [TX]-10, which would be a district that stretches almost to Louisiana,” West said Aug. 7. “Austinites don't have the same concerns as people in East Texas. We deserve representation that represents and reflects our community.”
Veronikah Warms, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, called the proposed map “targeted racial discrimination.”
“If it were implemented, white Texans, who comprise only 40% of the population, would control 79% of the congressional delegation,” Warms told the committee. “What the legislature delivers with SB 4 is a map that brazenly and intentionally cracks historic majority-minority districts... and then packs other minority groups into tight urban areas to dilute their political power.”
The background
In a departure from earlier redistricting hearings, no members of Congress testified Aug. 7. King told committee members Aug. 6 that he invited Texas’ 12 congressional Democrats; however, he said most did not respond to his emails and others were unable to attend. King added that his office reached out to the congressional Democrats around 10 a.m. Aug. 5, which he said was similar to the notice he provided for previous hearings.
“I had presumed that if they had any concerns over legality regarding this map, that they would come today,” King said Aug. 6. “A number of them had expressed a desire to see the map. That's why we wanted to invite them back and give them another shot at telling us their concerns, if they had any.”
Several U.S. Reps. spoke during an Aug. 1 House hearing on the same proposal, including Casar; Doggett; Al Green, D-Houston; Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston; Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas; and Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth.
Crockett told House lawmakers that she planned to request an emergency court order fighting the proposed congressional map “as soon as possible.”
“I do feel as if there is a violation right now, if this map passes, of the Voting Rights Act for so many reasons,” Crockett said Aug. 1. “Every single time Texas has gone to court [over its congressional maps], they have lost for being intentionally racially discriminatory. I believe that there will be no difference this time.”
King said Aug. 7 that he does not think Texas’ current legislative or congressional maps broke federal laws.
Also of note
The committee also invited Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon and Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, to testify. King said neither responded.
Dhillon sent a July 7 letter flagging four of Texas’ congressional districts as unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered, which Gov. Greg Abbott cited when asking lawmakers to redistrict. King and Hunter, however, said they have not spoken with the DOJ and wanted to redraw Texas’ congressional districts to “increase the number of Republican congressional members elected from Texas.”
Senators said Aug. 7 that Kincaid and the National Republican Redistricting Trust were involved in drawing both Texas’ current congressional map and the proposal being considered during the current special session.
