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Coalitions of minority groups cannot band together to claim that political maps constitute discriminatory gerrymandering, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a Galveston County lawsuit.

The 12-6 decision found that the Voting Rights Act’s protections for individual racial or ethnic groups do not extend to multiple groups joining together to claim that political boundaries dilute their votes. The ruling came in a case in which Black and Latino voters jointly sued Galveston County for voter discrimination after the county dismantled a district where people of color made up the majority.

The ruling reverses decades of precedent set by the judiciary that allowed racial groups to sue together under the Voting Rights Act. The ruling only applies to Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi — the states where the court has jurisdiction.

The court wrote that the Voting Rights Act does not explicitly permit coalition, therefore they have no legal standing.

“The statutory text points to only one conclusion, that coalition claims are impermissible,” the ruling said.

While the majority claims that this “decision will in no way imperil” the success of the Voting Rights Act, six judges remained unsure.

"To imply, as the majority does, that discrimination is permissible so long as the victims of the discrimination are racially diverse, is not only an absurd conclusion but it is one with grave consequences," Judge Dana M. Douglas wrote in her dicessent.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/02/voting-rights-act-race-redistricting-5th-circuit-texas-galveston/.

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