Congressman Veasey Lauds DOJ Decision to File Suit Against State of Texas

DALLAS/FORT WORTH, TX - U.S. Congressman Marc Veasey (D-TX) issued the following statement today in response to Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement that the U.S. Department of Justice will file suit against the state of Texas ruling that the state’s strict voter I.D. legislation is in direct violation of Section 2 in the Voting Rights Act:

“Attorney General Greg Abbott has left the Department of Justice no choice but to file this lawsuit. The fact that Abbott would move to enforce a law already found to be discriminatory by a federal court is regretful and casts a bad light on our state.

It's a sad fact that year after year; minorities in Texas are shown over and over again that we cannot depend on Abbott to protect our voting rights. And again, he is also spending the dollars of hard working taxpayers to implement and wage court battles to uphold this discriminatory law. My question for Abbott is simple, "at what point do you stop?” said Rep. Veasey.

The DOJ lawsuit asserts that the Texas Voter ID law violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and petitions the court to stop Texas from enforcing the law and further requests that the court call on Texas to seek pre-clearance for all voting changes by placing the state under Section C3 of VRA. The lawsuit comes months after the June Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act, voiding a provision of the law that determines which state and local governments have to seek federal permission to change their voting laws. Leaving it to Congress to create the new formula for determining which jurisdictions will be covered under Section 5. Merely hours after the monumental ruling, Texas Attorney General Gregg Abbott asserted that nothing now could stop the state from implementing its controversial voter ID law.