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WASHINGTON - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defended the Justice Department's decision to overrule staff lawyers' concerns that a Texas redistricting plan orchestrated by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay could dilute minority voting rights.
A Justice Department memo released Friday showed agency staffers unanimously objected to the Texas plan, which DeLay pushed through the Legislature to help elect more Republicans to the U.S. House.
Senior agency officials approved the new districts for the 2004 elections.
Gonzales said the plan was approved by people "confirmed by the Senate to exercise their own independent judgment" and pointed out that their disagreement with other agency employees doesn't mean the final decision was wrong.
In fact, there is evidence the decision was the correct one. A three-judge federal panel upheld the plan and Texas has since elected one additional black congressman.
Of the state's 32 House seats, Republicans held 15 before the 2004 elections. Under the DeLay-backed plan, Republicans were elected to 21 of the state's seats in the House.
The redistricting plan has been challenged in court by Democrats and minority voting groups saying that it was unconstitutional and that district boundaries had been illegally manipulated to give one party an unfair advantage. The Supreme Court is expected to announce soon whether it will consider the case.
"The Supreme Court is our last hope for rectifying this gross injustice. We couldn't count on the (lower) court. We couldn't count on the state, and we obviously couldn't count on the politically corrupt Justice Department," said Gerry Hebert, an attorney for the challengers.
The plan was approved by the Republican-controlled state Legislature in special sessions after Democratic lawmakers left the state capital in a political move aimed at blocking votes on the new congressional boundaries.
Because of past discrimination against minority voters, Texas is required under provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to get Justice Department approval for any voting changes it makes to ensure the changes don't undercut minority voting.
"The state of Texas has not met its burden in showing that the proposed congressional redistricting plan does not have a discriminatory effect," Justice Department officials said in the memo made public by the Lone Star Project, a Democratic group.
Eight department staffers, including the heads of the Voting Rights Division, objected to the redistricting map, according to the memo, which was first reported by the Washington Post.
Hebert said when a case is a close call staff lawyers usually include counterpoints to their conclusions in their memo. But he said there is nothing in the 73-page memo suggesting a plausible reason for approving the map.