Login | July 19, 2025
Federal trial examines demographic shift of redistricting in Tarrant County
DAVID MONTGOMERY
Fort Worth Report
Published: July 18, 2025
AUSTIN -- Federal judges in El Paso are reviewing a lawsuit that alleges Texas redistricting architects racially discriminated against minority voters in drastically reshaping a Tarrant County-based state Senate district.
Under the 2021 redistricting plan by the Legislature, state Senate District 10, which had been based largely in southern Tarrant County, was stretched across a half-dozen counties to the west and south, with a resulting demographic shift to higher numbers of both white and Republican residents.
Beverly Powell, a Democrat who represented Senate District 10 at the time, joined then-Tarrant County Commissioner Roy Brooks and other North Texas plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the plan and later withdrew from seeking reelection in the face of likely defeat.
Nearly four years later, the Senate District 10 case is part of a consolidated group of redistricting challenges being heard before a three-judge panel. Designating Gov. Greg Abbott as the chief defendant, at least six major plaintiff groups are contesting electoral maps on the grounds that they ignored surging Latino growth in the last decade and diluted the influence of Blacks and Hispanics at the ballot box.
The trial started May 21.
The consolidated suits take aim at the state's 2021 redistricting plans for Texas congressional seats and the state House and Senate, alleging potential violations of the Voting Rights Act and the Equal Protection Act.
Plaintiffs are calling for two new Hispanic congressional districts in the Fort Worth-Dallas and Houston regions, noting that Latinos accounted for 50% of Texas' population growth from 2010 to 2020. The League of United Latin American Citizens asserts that the plan reduces the number of Hispanc majority state House districts from 33 to 30 and dilutes Latino voting strength in key districts.
Lawyers for the Texas attorney general's office, representing the governor's office and state redistricting architects, have defended the redistricting.
"On this record, plaintiffs cannot show that the Legislature acted with a discriminatory purpose, much less that race predominated the redistricting process," state lawyers wrote in a legal brief.
The trial in El Paso, more than 600 miles west of Fort Worth, comes as Tarrant County commissioners voted 3-2 to adopt new precinct lines that raise prospects for a bigger Republican majority in the county governing body.
Matt Angle, Texas political analyst and founder of the Democrat-aligned Lone Star Project, said the Senate District 10 redistricting is "by far" a dominant issue in the El Paso trial as the "most egregious violation of the Voting Rights Act."
The plan retained parts of Tarrant County and neighboring Parker County, but stretched much of Senate District 10 out of the populous Fort Worth-Dallas region to include all of Brown, Callahan, Johnson, Palo Pinto, Shackelford and Stephens counties.
"They cracked apart all the minority areas of that district and packed them into areas that were largely white areas," Powell told the Fort Worth Report, using terms associated with redistricting tactics. "And it's a sad shame that they completely -- what's the word I'm looking for? -- annihilated the voice of minorities across Senate District 10."
Powell, now a special assistant to Texas Wesleyan University President Emily Messer, spent one term in the Senate and moved to Fort Worth about three years ago with her banker husband, Charlie Powell. In 2018, she defeated Sen. Konni Burton, a Republican, for the Senate District 10 seat.
After the 2021 redistricting, Powell declared the reelection race as "unwinnable" and withdrew, giving an opening to former Fort Worth policeman and long-time state Rep. Phil King of Weatherford, who was unopposed as the only Republican in the 2022 general election.
King, who took office in January 2023, now chairs the Senate Economic Development Committee and just completed his second regular legislative session in the upper chamber.
Asked for his views on the redistricting case in El Paso, King said, "I would love to (comment) but I really can't comment on it because they're in the middle of the trial."
Seven lawsuits against the redistricting plans have been consolidated into a broad challenge led by the League of United Latin American Citizens.
Other plaintiff groups in the consolidated case include the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, chaired by Rep. Ramon Romero, D-Fort Worth; the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund; NAACP; and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Former County Commissioner Brooks is leading the group of Black and Hispanic plaintiffs.
Brooks, a Democrat, retired as a commissioner in December 2024 after declining to seek reelection. He told the Report he has submitted an affidavit in the El Paso trial but said he otherwise does not want to discuss the case.
In a petition filed in March, the Brooks v. Abbott plaintiffs noted that the Senate District 10 plan duplicated a plan that a federal court in the District of Columbia ruled as "intentionally discriminatory" a decade earlier.
The Brooks team asserted that under redistricting Tarrant County's Black, Latino and Asian voters would be submerged in "Anglo-dominated districts in which they will have no opportunity to elect their preferred candidates," even at a time when the district's Anglo population had fallen by 10 points in the span of a decade.
"This was intentionally racially discriminatory against Tarrant County's minority voters," said the petitioners.
Propelled by a booming Sun Belt economy, Texas saw its population grow by 4 million residents from 2010 to 2020, with 95% of the growth coming from minority voters, according to the filing.
Although Texas gained two additional congressional seats to expand its delegation to 38 U.S. House members, neither of the new seats were minority opportunity districts under the state redistricting plan, according to plaintiffs.
Further, they contend, the redistricting map for the Legislature "likewise dilutes minorities' voting strength" for the state House, configuring two legislative districts in Bell County to ensure that Anglo voters "can elect their preferred candidates" and undercutting minority voting strength in a Bexar County House seat.
The petition criticizes the chair of the Senate Redistricting Committee, Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, saying she was "fully aware" of the plan's impact on Senate District 10 and gave "demonstrably false" statements in "support of her dismantling of SD10" when Powell questioned her about the redistricting process during Senate floor debate.
In a statement to the Report, Huffman said the redistricting plan, including Senate District 10, "was completed after soliciting public input via extensive public hearings and Senate discussion and debate."
"As chair of the Senate Special Committee on Redistricting," she said, "I was fully committed to a fair and transparent process with all applicable state and federal laws and guiding Supreme Court case law throughout the process."
Several North Texans have already taken the stand.
The first witness to testify was former Fort Worth council member and mayor pro tempore Sal Espino, who discussed the need for a Hispanic congressional district.
Other witnesses included Romero, testifying as chair of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus; Rep. Nicole Collier, D-Fort Worth; Sen. Royce West; D-Dallas; and Mansfield Mayor Michael Evans.
Romero told the Report that he challenges the failure to create more Latino opportunity seats in Congress and the Legislature.
"With all that increased population growth being in the Latino community, one would think that would allow for more opportunity seats for Latinos," he said.
Instead, Romero and other Latino plaintiffs said, the plan reduces the number of Hispanic majority House seats from 33 to 30 and weakens Latino voting strength in key districts.
Mark Gaber, a Washington, D.C., redistricting lawyer on the Brooks legal team, said he's hopeful for a favorable decision on Senate District 10 from federal Judges David C. Guaderrama, Jerry E. Smith and Jeffrey E. Brown.
"I think that we've certainly proved our case, in particular, that Senate District 10 was the product of intentional racial discrimination," he said.
Powell testified before the panel in 2022 when the Brooks plaintiffs sought a preliminary injunction that was denied by the judges. She said the district was a "well-balanced swing district" that had been occupied by both Democrats and Republicans when it was rooted in Tarrant County and was "also very well-balanced in terms of the racial make-up."
"I certainly do hope they return Senate District 10 to the original configuration," she said. "It would certainly be the right thing to do."
More redistricting could be incoming for Texas. The New York Times reported June 9 that the White House is encouraging state leaders to consider a mid-decade redistricting to boost the number of Republicans from Texas in the U.S. House.
The Fort Worth Report's Texas legislative coverage is supported by Kelly Hart. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
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