Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, called the redistricting suit “absurd” and a “ploy” by the administration. The suit intensified a running battle between the Biden administration and Texas, a state that defied federal guidance on the use of masks to stop the spread of Covid-19 and that passed a near-total ban on abortion that the Justice Department, in another suit, has called unconstitutional. In the case of voters in Dallas, those new districts could extend more than 100 miles from the city center. The lawsuit laid out several examples where minority districts were eliminated altogether or redrawn in such a way that minority voters in urban areas were newly counted in rural, predominantly white areas. The Texas plan not only “denies Black and Latino voters the equal opportunity to participate in the election process,” some aspects of the plan were created “with discriminatory intent,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said at a news conference.

Seventeen states have already finalized congressional maps this year, with more expected to complete the process before the spring. The suit filed by the department on Monday also puts other states on notice as they redraw their voting districts, a process that occurs once a decade. The department sued the state in early November over a new voting law that it argued would disenfranchise Texans who do not speak English, people with disabilities, older voters and those who live outside the United States. The suit was the second in a little over a month to be filed by the Justice Department challenging Texas over voting. Garland said that the redistricting plan that the state’s Republican-led legislature approved in October violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which says that voters cannot be denied equal access to the political process based on their race or ethnicity.

In announcing the suit, Attorney General Merrick B.

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department sued Texas on Monday over the state’s plan to redraw its voting districts, saying it would essentially make ballots cast by Black and Latino voters count for less than those of others.

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