Redistricting Special Section

Here is a list of resources from Texas organizations that will help you stay involved and informed about redistricting as Texas legislators redraw congressional and state legislative district boundaries. Texas in particular has been found in the past to intentionally discriminate against people of color when it comes to this process.

By Alexa Ura, The Texas Tribune Opening a second front in widening legal wars over redistricting, a coalition of mostly Hispanic, Democratic members of the Texas House filed suit in state court Wednesday challenging the constitutionality of the new political map for the state House.

By Alexa Ura, The Texas Tribune Before they’ve even been signed into law, Texas’ new maps for Congress and the statehouse are being challenged in court for allegedly discriminating against Latino voters.

By Alexa Ura and Mandi Cai, The Texas Tribune The intensity with which Texas Republicans are struggling against demographic tides as they redraw the state's congressional districts can best be seen in their proposed maps for the Dallas-Fort Worth region, specifically its suburbs.

By Cassandra Pollock, The Texas Tribune A Texas House committee voted out a revised draft to redraw the lower chamber’s districts, which will give Republicans stronger positioning in the House of the Legislature for the next decade. The Oct. 5 committee vote puts the proposal on track to hit the House floor for debate in the coming days.

Texas House members on Oct. 30  released the first proposal for a new map redrawing the chamber's 150-member districts. The initial draft would both increase Republicans' strength across the state and the number of districts in which white residents make up a majority of eligible voters.

In a state where more than 60% of the residents are people of color, the Texas Legislature is proposing maps where white people have voting majorities in 50% of the congressional districts. That’s not representative.

New Census data in Texas reveals there will be two new congressional seats based on the growing population of people of color. However, these communities may not be able to benefit from these redistricting lines. In this video, PBS Political Reporter Daniel Bush goes in depth on this issue.

Hours after the Texas Legislature released the first draft of the redistricting map, Fair Maps Texas held a press conference featuring a diverse group of Texans who criticized gerrymandering and called for a fair redistricting process. The Texans demanded better representation as they spoke out on the impact that the current districting map has imposed on them and urged U.S Congress to pass the For the People Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Act.  Watch the full news conference here:  

In theory, the 2021 cycle of redistricting is about revising district boundaries to evenly distribute Texas’ fast-growing population and ensure voters have fair representation. But with the mapmaking in the hands of politicians, and their individual electoral survival at stake, redistricting has also become an exercise in political rigging. The state Senate released its first proposed map on Saturday and the special legislative session in which redistricting will be featured formally begins Monday.