Two Black Houston members of Congress decry redistricting map that pits them against each other

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Congressman Al Green and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee are long time major players in the Democratic Party. Joan Huffman and the Texas GOP are racist assholes who want to gerrymander one of these Congresspersons out of a job. The Texas map is racist as heck and will be challenged as racial gerrymandering.

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U.S. Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green — both Houston Democrats — testified Monday at the Texas Capitol against proposed district maps that would break up communities of Black voters and pit the two incumbents against each other.

“It doesn’t look right for the only two persons in the state of Texas to be running against each other in a congressional district from the same party to be of African ancestry,” Green said at a hearing of the the Texas Senate Special Committee on Redistricting.

Green and Jackson Lee are two out of five Black members of Texas’ 36-person congressional delegation, but in the proposed redrawing of the districts, Lee is drawn out of her own district and looped into Green’s.

“Thirty-eight districts,” Green said, noting the two new congressional districts added to Texas because of population growth, which was fueled by people of color. “Two African Americans running against each other in the proposed map.”

Despite their objections, the Senate committee voted out the redrawn congressional map Monday without addressing the district overlap. The map heads next to the full Senate for a vote. It also has to be approved by the House and can still change before it is signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott.

Jackson Lee represents District 18, once represented by Barbara Jordan, who in 1972 became the first Black Texan elected to Congress after Reconstruction. There are families in the district who have lived there for 50 years, Jackson Lee said.

“The 18th [District] has been surgically, erroneously and unconstitutionally, under federal law, been drawn incorrectly,” Jackson Lee said.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. There was a protest tonight on this racial gerrymandering

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[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. There will be litigation on this racially motivated gerrymandered

There will be litigation

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Sources close to Jackson Lee and Green contend that they do not plan to run against one another but plan to fight the potential move in court. The Texas members of Congress are currently sharing the same attorney in this matter. So far, there is no court date as they have to wait on the Republican-majority Texas House of Representatives to draw up their plan.

These same Democrats have faced this challenge before during the last time the state legislature took up the redrawing of districts. Green and Jackson Lee won the court battle then, and were able to stand on the pre-clearance portion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that was still intact at the time.

Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) (L) speaks during a press conference with Rep. Al Green (D-TX) (R) at the U.S. Capitol March 25, 2010 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

But now they would be challenging a current voting system in which the Voting Rights Act has essentially been dismantled by the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby v. Holder to strip federal pre-clearance for states with a history of racist voter suppression.

Both Green and Jackson Lee are flying back to their home state and are expected to testify in person for a hearing in the Austin statehouse on Wednesday morning that focuses on the redistricting of Texas’s 18th and 9th congressional districts.

Former Obama Administration Attorney General Eric Holder has been working on these gerrymandering issues for the Democratic Party since 2017. In a written statement, Holder said, “the Texas Legislature has the opportunity to undo the proposed gerrymandering scheme and draw a fair map that accurately reflects the population shifts from the last decade. As it now stands, Republicans are proposing a gerrymandering map that clearly ignores both the census data and community input.”