For readers who have followed voting rights issues for a long time, you’ll want to check this out. The Justice Department thinks it has the sort of evidence of racially discriminatory redistricting that you would only dream up for a law school exam: actual emails from Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), pictured, discussing ways to dilute the Hispanic vote in Texas when they redrew congressional districts this year.
You can practically hear the DOJ lawyers high-fiving each other in their brief to the court:
While the existence of contemporaneous statements of direct racial intent related to current redistricting efforts may be rare, the email exchanges between United States Congressional representatives and staff, and State officials involved in devising the State’s plans, provide riveting circumstantial evidence bearing witness to the process discussed above, where data as to race and ethnicity rather than partisan data drove the line drawing for the proposed Congressional plan, and where the State sought to exclude minority representatives from the redistricting process.
Here’s the kicker: Gov. Rick Perry signed that discriminatory redistricting plan into law in Texas. So this is a story with national political implications on multiple levels.
