In the voter ID lawsuit, the U.S. government will contend that Texas adopted a voter identification law with the purpose of denying or restricting voters’ rights based on race, color or membership in a language minority group. The law requires voters to produce a state-issued ID before casting a ballot, while before voters could use their registration cards.
Determined to stop a potential wave of states from pursuing measures that suppress voting rights, the Justice Department sued Texas on Thursday over the state’s voter ID law and will seek to intervene in a lawsuit over its redistricting laws that minority groups complain are discriminatory.
Texas Republicans, however, insist these laws are designed to protect the state’s elections from fraud.
Attorney General Eric Holder said the action marks another step in the effort to protect voting rights of all eligible Americans. He said the government will not allow a recent Supreme Court decision to be interpreted as a precedence for states to suppress voting rights.
“This represents the department’s latest action to protect voting rights, but it will not be our last,” the attorney general said.
Holder is concentrating on Texas because of years of litigation over the state’s voter ID law and redistricting maps that federal judges in Washington have determined would either indirectly disenfranchise minorities and the poor, or intentionally discriminate minorities.
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