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Can’t say we didn’t see this coming, but a pair of Dallas voters are alleging that the recently redrawn City Council districts illegally dilutes the Hispanic vote.
The city redrew its 14 council districts following the release of the 2010 Census. It adopted the final maps in October. According to a lawsuit filed today in federal court by Renato De Los Santos and Hilda Ramirez Duarte, only three of them are viable Hispanic districts when, given the city’s demographics — Hispanics make up 42.4 percent of the population and 36.8 percent of the voting age population — there should have been four.
The fact that there aren’t “prevents any meaningful participation in the electoral process by Hispanics.”
De Los Santos and Duarte are seeking to bar the city from holding elections using the new maps and asking that the districts be redrawn so that the City Council better represents the Hispanic population which, the suit reminds us, “historically suffered from and continues to suffer from the effects of discriminatory treatment in education, employment, health, income and living conditions which hinders their ability to participate fully in the political process.”
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The suit’s after the jump.
