President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) sued a small Texas county for drawing its district map in a way that eradicated a sole Democrat-held county seat, arguing the map violates the Voting Rights Act (VRA). But the DOJ’s decision to sue the county could backfire and potentially flip Democrat-held congressional seats after the county called its bluff and went to court over so-called “coalition districts.”
Galveston County’s Precinct 3 is held by Democrat Stephen Holmes and has long been a Democrat stronghold. Until recently, the county lines had been drawn in such a way that they created a “coalition district,” according to Paul Ready, general counsel for Galveston County. A “coalition district” is a district in which no minority group could be a majority, but multiple minority groups are then combined to form a majority-minority district to increase the chances of electing a candidate preferred by the minority groups — often a Democrat, Ready explained to The Federalist.
Galveston County’s brief to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, obtained by The Federalist, alleges that coalition districts “present political, not racial, alliances.”
Democrats contend coalition districts are compliant with the VRA and have used these types of districts to amass political control by lumping together multiple minority groups to form a single majority-minority district, Ready explained. That’s the position the Biden DOJ is taking now.
Galveston County argues the VRA is only applicable if there is a sufficiently large enough single racial minority group to create a district where that
