DOJ wins injunction against Beaumont ISD

texasredistricting:

At the request of the Justice Department, a district court in Washington has at least temporarily blocked upcoming May elections for the Beaumont ISD board of trustees. 

Lawyers for the Justice Department sought the emergency stay yesterday, citing the school district’s plan to proceed with the election using a redistricting map and modified election procedures, which, though ordered by a state court of appeals, had yet to be precleared under section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

The TRO, signed by U.S. District Judge Richard Contreras, remains in place until the entire three-judge panel in the preclearance case filed by the district in late March can hold a hearing on DOJ’s request to convert the TRO into a preliminary injunction.

The school district, however, issued a statement today saying that the election had been cancelled.

A copy of the TRO can be found here.

A detailed outline of the Beaumont ISD saga can be found here.

This is why the redistricting battle is so crucial - and there are off year elections, and a lot of local municipality elections scheduled for May.  

Think school boards don’t matter?  Get one full of Tea Party members and see how things go.. 

Shelby Co. transcript

texasredistricting:

The transcript from this morning’s oral argument in Shelby Co. can found here.

I will post the audio tape as well when it is made available.

Court sets July 9 trial date in Texas voter ID case

texasredistricting:

The D.C. district court has set trial in Texas’ voter ID suit for July 9-13.  

That’s nearly three weeks earlier than requested by the Justice Department and intervenors.  

However, the court also directed that issues related to the constitutionality of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act be bifurcated from the main trial and said that those issues would “not be addressed unless the Court denies judicial preclearance of Senate Bill [14].”  

Since that means that hearings on constitutional issues would take place only after a ruling on the preclearance claims (by definition some time after the July 13 end of trial), that would seem to make it less likely that the constitutional issues could be teed up in time to get them to the Supreme Court before the November elections.

The court’s scheduling order set a discovery cutoff of June 15 for both fact and expert testimony and directed that any dispositive motions (such as a motion for summary judgment) be filed by June 18.

The court’s scheduling order can be found here.