Texas Republicans May Have Invented a New Kind of Gerrymandering

Matt Gallagher examines legislative proposals by the Texas GOP that may preclude the Democrats from ever winning a state-level election again.

Texas State Capitol in Austin. Photo: Ralph Lauer/ZUMA Press/Alamy

As the old saying goes, ‘everything is bigger in Texas.’ Even attempts to undermine democracy. 

The Lone Star State has a long-standing reputation for some of the most aggressive gerrymandering ever attempted. Congressional and legislative districts are redrawn every ten years to account for census changes, and Texas legislators routinely attempt to map them out in ways that reduce the voting power of Democratic constituencies and minority groups. 

While none of that is necessarily new, the most recent (and according to some, the most egregious) redistricting session in 2021 has prompted a major legal row. The US Department of Justice, individual citizens, advocacy groups, and others are suing on a number of different grounds, with most arguments hinging on accusations of racial discrimination in violation of key civil rights legislation (Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965) 

For a time, Republicans were banking on a GOP-friendly Supreme Court to usher their redistricting plans forward. But it may not be that simple. Despite being loaded up with Trump-era judges, the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 in June 2023 that a similar gerrymandering scheme in Alabama had diluted Black Alabamans’ voting power, upholding a core principle of that same fundamental civil rights law.

That decision was not a good signal for those looking to rig the map. The fact that Section 2 remains legal precedent means that Texas’ anti-democratic 2021 redistricting could very well succumb to legal challenges of its own (as their other schemes have under more liberal Supreme Court justices).