In federal trial, Galveston County challenged on efforts to undo Black and Latino voting power via TexasTribune
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The trial before Judge Jeffrey V. Brown, a Trump appointee who has given each side 40 hours to make their cases, opened to a packed courtroom in the federal courthouse on Galveston Island. It will focus on how the countythe sole commissioner precinct in which Black and Latino voters made up a majority of the electorate
“At the end of the day, there is no meaningful dispute that for decades Galveston County’s Black and Latino community has been able to elect the candidate of their choice continuously and now under the challenged map, that community has zero opportunity,” Chen said in court. “You cannot get less opportunity than zero.”
During a contentious November 2021 meeting to approve the precinct map in question, Constable Derrick Rose held his tongue as the commissioners court — led by the same county judge from a decade before — finished the job. The previous version of Precinct 3 resulted from legal wrangling over the county’s 2011 redistricting work, which initially dropped the share of Black and Latino voters in the district. Now, freed from preclearance, the county couldn’t keep it, Russo argued.
Russo said delayed census data forced a quick turnaround on the map. The data was not released until August and September and came in a format that wasn’t “really user friendly,” he said, even though Galveston County had hired a longtime GOP redistricting guru to help redraw its map.
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