City of Irving, Texas Sued Over New City Council Districts

DALLAS, Feb. 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A federal lawsuit was filed today in Dallas, Texas challenging the constitutionality of the newly drawn, single-member city council districts of Irving, Texas.

The complaint and future filings can be found at: www.projectonfairrepresentation.org ("current litigation").

The lawsuit asserts that the new Irving single-member districting plan is unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause because the districts do not comply with the "one-person, one-vote" requirement.

In 2009, Irving's at-large council member voting system was struck down by a Dallas federal court as a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The City elected to settle the case rather than appeal. The single-member districts being challenged today are the ones that were created by the negotiated settlement.

Per the federal court's ruling, one of the new districts was specifically designed to be a Hispanic-majority district. In creating this Hispanic majority district, however, the City (at the instruction of the court) did not distinguish between citizens and non-citizens.

The plaintiffs are all residents of Irving who contend that some of the new districts are significantly under-populated with voting age citizens, while others are significantly over-populated. For instance, in the new Hispanic-majority district (District 1), there are approximately 13,029 citizens of voting age population, while in Districts 5 and 6 there are approximately 22,932 and 23,884 citizens of voting age population, respectively.

This disparity has created a citizen voting age population deviation as large as 83% between some of the districts. Because of this, the votes of citizens living in District 1 are worth nearly twice as much as the votes of citizens residing in Districts 5 and 6.

Edward Blum, the Director of the Project on Fair Representation (POFR), which is providing counsel to the plaintiffs, said, "It is not fair for Irving's city council districts to be so badly malapportioned between voting age citizens and non-citizens. The new districts are a clear violation of the Constitution's protections of one-person, one-vote."

Attorneys for the plaintiffs are Kent Krabill and Jeremy Fielding. (See: http://www.lynnllp.com/bios/Kent-D-Krabill and http://www.lynnllp.com/bios/Jeremy-A-Fielding).

Plaintiffs will not be available to the press. Media inquiries should be directed to Messrs. Blum, Fielding or Krabill.

SOURCE The Project on Fair Representation

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