Wendy Davis vs Greg Abbott: redistricting fight over lawyer fees heating up
AUSTIN — Lawyers who helped Sen. Wendy Davis beat back Republican attempts to retool her district urged a San Antonio federal court Monday to award them with hundreds of thousands of dollars spent challenging the state’s 2011 redistricting maps.
It’s the latest legal salvo in an ongoing redistricting battle between Davis, the Democratic gubernatorial hopeful, and Attorney General Greg Abbott, the lead Republican candidate running for governor (it’s also part of a larger skirmish involving 2011 redistricting fees for U.S House and Texas House maps).
Davis — along with the League of United Latin American Citizens — sued the state back in 2011 over state senate maps the GOP-led Legislature approved that year that carved up her Tarrant County district by shifting thousands of black and Hispanic voters into neighboring districts.
Just weeks before her now infamous filibuster over the summer, Davis declared victory in the redistricting case when Abbott’s legal team told a federal three-judge panel in San Antonio they were backing off the state senate maps. That was cemented when the Legislature in June approved maps keeping her district completely in tact — and in court in September when the trio of San Antonio judges declared Davis a “prevailing” party and instructed her lawyers to file for reimbursement.
More at http://blog.chron.com/texaspolitics/2013/11/wendy-davis-vs-greg-abbott-redistricting-fight-over-lawyer-fees-heating-up-2/?cmpid=houtexhcat .
