Voting Rights Act doesn’t protect coalitions of racial or ethnic groups challenging political maps, appeals court rules

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. 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.