The city of Pasadena, Texas was determined to have violated both the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment by U.S. Chief District Judge Lee Rosenthal. The action by Pasadena Mayor Johnny Isbell, a Republican, that was deemed unconstitutional was his alleged attempt to limit Hispanic membership on the City Council through a campaign in 2013 to change the city’s electoral system. The change made it so that City Council members were no longer elected by district, but instead through a system which kept six districts, but made two seats elected by the city at large. This allegedly diluted the power of the votes of Hispanics, who make up about 62% of the population of Pasadena, but do not turn out to vote in numbers effective enough to win the city-wide at large districts.
This change was made possible by the 2013 Supreme Court ruling in the case Shelby County vs. Holder. That ruling gutted the Voting Rights Act, and (pertaining to this situation) allowed states with a history of creating racist voting laws and plans, to create their own electoral plans again without the oversight of the Department of Justice.
The referendum to change the electoral system in this way was hotly contested. It won by 79 votes.
According to Judge Rosenthal, 99.6% of Latino voters in Pasadena were opposed to this change. His final decision was to force the city to return to the system that was in existence before the referendum, with eight districts The full ruling is available here. The lawyer for the city, C. Robert Heath, said in a statement to the Houston Chronicle that the city needed to study the ruling before making any further decisions. MALDEF, the organization that filed the lawsuit stated that the ruling was “well reasoned”, and that this case was a “clear warning” to other municipalities looking at passing similar laws.
