Lawsuit Demands Single Member Election Districts for Top State Courts

A coalition of Civil Rights groups say they will sue the State of Texas to get the justices on the state’s two highest courts, the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, be elected in single member districts instead of being elected statewide, as is currently the practice, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.

Kristen Clarke of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law says statewide, at large elections allow the majority, which today is Anglo voters, to overwhelm Black and Latino supported candidates.

“Because of racially polarized voting, the choice of Latino voters is often one that loses in elections conducted in the state,” she said.

Of the 18 justices on the two courts, only one of them is a Democrat, and he was elected as a Republican and then switched parties once in office.

The Texas Supreme Court is the highest court for civil matters, which frequently include cases involving civil rights and how the state deals with Blacks, Latinos, and other minorities. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is the highest court for criminal matters, and deals with cases involving the death penalty.

Clarke says a more representative membership of the two courts would go a long ways toward insuring respect for the judiciary.

“We believe that diversity on our judiciary can help to instill grater public confidence in the state’s justice system, and restore confidence in the outcomes that are produced,” Clarke said.

Judicial races are generally ignored by voters, and most Texasn probably can’t name a single justice on either court. Many of the justices on both courts were appointed by Republican governors and some ran for election unopposed as the incumbant.

Attorney Jose Garza, who is representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, bristled at a suggestion that the goal of the lawsuit is not necessary to insure diversity, as there are Hispanic justices on both courts, but to insure that more Democrats are elected.

“Over the last 25 years, every candidate that the Latino community has supported for the Supreme Court and the Court of Criminal Appeals has lost,” he said.

Many cities, including San Antonio, switched from at large to single member City Council voting in the eighties and nineties for this same reason. Since people of various ethnic and racial groups tend to concentrate in certain areas, single member districts give them a greater chance of electing a candidate of their choice.

The Civil Rights groups say a State Supreme Court centered in, for example, the overwhelmingly Latino Rio Grande Valley would be far more likely than an at large election to elect a Hispanic justice.