Voting Rights
Marc Veasey (D), who was the lead plaintiff in the case against the state, told the Texas Tribune that the ruling gives all Texans a shot at making their voice heard, and called on the Gov. and embattle state Attorney General Ken Paxton to end their efforts on discriminating against the state's minority residents.
In 2012, a federal court ruled that Texas's voter ID law violated Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and stopped it from going into effect. However, in 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a critical component of the landmark civil rights law that had required states, like Texas, with a history of discrimination to get federal approval before making any major changes to state voting or election laws. Congressman Marc Veasey (D-Fort Worth) ultimately filed a lawsuit challenging the law (again) when then-Gov.
The Texas law was challenged by U.S. Congressman Marc Veasey (CD33 – Texas) and other minority plaintiffs shortly after it was adopted in 2011.The Veasey plaintiffs have successfully argued that the law is discriminatory at every stage of the litigation.
Washington, D.C. – Today, Congressman Marc Veasey, TX-33, will join House Democrats in a press conference calling for substantive action to protect and restore voting rights ahead of the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. Immediately following the press conference, Congressman Veasey will be available to discuss the latest developments on the Texas voter photo ID lawsuit.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today,Congressman Marc Veasey, TX-33, released the following statement as he joins Rep. John Lewis, Rep. Terri Sewell, Rep. Judy Chu, and Rep. Linda Sanchez as an original co-sponsor of the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2015:
In the Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area, a new heavily Hispanic 33rd District is drawn while the 6th remains the court-mandated coalition district. The 30th is kept majority black. All three seats are heavily Democratic, and Rep. Marc Veasey likely runs in the 6th. This would allow Hispanic voters to reliably elect their preferred candidate in the 33rd, which is not the case under the current map despite Republican claims that it would do so.
Some districts have significantly more children, felons, and immigrants who are ineligible to vote, and this gives the voters in those districts more political clout. For example, while each district holds the same population, 70 percent of citizens in Lamar Smith's San Antonio district can vote, while only 44 percent of those in Marc Veasey's Fort Worth district are eligible. This means that, in a perfect election with 100 percent turnout, a vote in Veasey's district would carry more weight than one in Lamar's district.
The 36 congressional districts in Texas each had 698,488 people in them when they were drawn. That seeming exactitude hides big differences. The 17th Congressional District, represented by Bill Flores, R-Bryan, has the same number of people in it as the 33rd, represented by Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth. But Flores' district has 532,324 adults — 62,868 more than Veasey's. That means there are more children in the Veasey district than in the Flores district.
A few months later, in October 2013, federal Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos struck down the voter ID law in a consolidated suit filed against the state by U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Texas, the NAACP, and the Mexican American Legislative Council.
The law was subsequently blocked as racially discriminatory under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in 2012, right until the U.S. Supreme Court declared Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional in 2013, allowing the law to go back into effect.