Yet another lawsuit has been filed against the state of Texas over its abhorrent redistricting maps, which were approved last month by Gov. Greg Abbott after the third and final special legislative session of the year. The Texas State Conference of the NAACP is being represented by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and Dechert LLP, who filed their complaint in federal court in the Western District of Texas, Austin Division, last Friday. The lawsuit explicitly names state Rep. Todd Hunter, who chairs the House Redistricting Committee and filed the house redistricting plan that was tinkered with but ultimately passed. Along the way, Hunter blocked public testimony from experts, imposed strict time limits on key hearing components, and forced lawmakers to push his proposals through while disregarding and ultimately voting down a baffling number of amendments designed to protect voters of color. Also named is state Sen. Joan Huffman, who chairs the Senate Special Committee on Redistricting and introduced congressional and senate redistricting maps. Huffman routinely ignored requests to show how the redistricting maps that were ultimately adopted complied with the Voting Rights Act and said she saw no evident reason to create any new opportunity districts for voters of color, despite the fact that a majority of the nearly 4 million new Texas residents counted in the recent census were Black, Asian, and Latino. Read more