In a federal complaint, the country’s oldest Latino civil rights organization charged Houston with failing to provide Latinos with equal representation by allowing city voters to choose five council members.
The League of United Latin American Citizens filed a complaint on Monday alleging that the use of at-large districts, in which all voters in the city can vote for the candidates instead of just those in a particular district, violates the Voting Rights Act. According to the lawsuit, the city’s elections are extremely racially divisive and the at-large election procedure dilutes Latinos’ voting power.
“Houston’s the only major city in Texas where five council members are elected at large and in essence, disenfranchising the Latino community,” Domingo Garcia, LULAC president, said in a phone interview. “All the other major cities, Austin, El Paso, Fort Worth, Dallas, have all single-member districts and have Latino representation that’s reflective of their diversity. Houston only has one Latino on City Council.”
LULAC claimed in its case submitted to the Southern District of Texas in Houston that the city had only ever elected two Hispanics through its at-large districts.
Latinos make up 44.5% of the population of Houston. It is also the fourth-most populous city in the country and Texas. LULAC emphasized that the council is in charge of a $5.7 billion budget.
A request for comment on the complaint was not immediately answered by Houston officials.
Cristina Acosta, Ivan Castillo, Anthony Rios, and Ivan Sanchez are the four Houston-based registered voters named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which also names LULAC as a defendant.
The lawsuit states that in 1979, voters elected the first two women, the first Mexican American, and increased the number of Black council members, transforming Houston’s City Council from a largely white male body to one that is more diverse.
According to the LULAC lawsuit, since that time, just 11 Latinos have been elected or appointed to single-member districts, and only two have been elected to at-large districts.
The lawsuit contests the city’s redistricting process’ newly created borders for single-member districts.