A district court judge is expected to decide whether to grant a temporary injunction against Tarrant County’s new commissioner precincts next week.
It’s part of a lawsuit filed by the League of Women Voters of Tarrant County and the League of United Latin American Citizens Fort Worth Council 4568. The lawsuit alleges the county’s mid-decade redistricting is unconstitutional, naming Tarrant County, the commissioners court and County Judge Tim O’Hare as defendants.
Judge Megan Fahey on Thursday heard arguments and testimony in the 348th District Court in the request for an injunction filed by the two groups.
The request comes as the two organizations work with the Texas Voting Rights Coalition in an attempt to stop the voting maps, which opponents have described as racist and a power grab.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued Thursday that the map is not legally valid because it focuses on population and partisanship without consideration for other state constitutional requirements for redistricting.
Nina Oishi, a voting rights staff attorney at the Civil Rights Project, said the lawsuit is about ensuring Tarrant County residents have a fair voice in county government.
“Especially in Tarrant County, the commissioner's court here is so powerful,” Oishi said after the hearing. “They set the budget. They maintain the roads. They determine what programs get funding.”
Attorneys for the county declined to speak to reporters after the hearing, citing a policy not to comment on pending litigation.
During the hearing, the county’s defense argued that the matter wasn’t fit for a district court because it was a political decision made by the commissioners court, a legislative body.
Fahey heard hours of arguments and testimony Thursday before announcing that the hearing would adjourn and she would come back with a decision, likely next week.
The attempt to prevent the county from implementing the maps comes after a federal judge denied an injunction in a separate lawsuit.
While Thursday’s hearing sought to delay implementation of the county’s new district map, the lawsuit’s end goal is to stop it altogether.
The League of Women Voters and LULAC allege in the suit that the county’s “secretive, rushed process” violated the Texas Open Meetings Act and intentionally discriminates against Black and Latino voters. It says O’Hare and most of the commissioners violated the state constitution in the process.
The petition notes that the court in 2021 conducted a review of precincts by “explicitly adopted criteria.’ The criteria, among several rules, required any new map to “avoid racial gerrymandering” and “have compact and contiguous precincts,” according to the suit.
The suit says precincts at the time were “evenly distributed” accounting for recent population growth and recalls that the court voted to keep that electoral map in effect until the next census in 2030.
Attorneys defending the county on Thursday said in their opening arguments that those claims are false and that the commissioners court has the right to redistrict commissioner precincts.
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