Civil rights attorney Nina Perales has been fighting for the voting rights of Latino Texans for a quarter century.

Nina Perales has been a civil rights attorney in Texas for 26 years, during which she has litigated two landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases against the state’s efforts to disenfranchise Latino voters through redistricting. She currently oversees several voting-rights lawsuits across the nation, challenging voter suppression as vice president of litigation at the ??Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), a nonprofit founded in San Antonio in 1968. MALDEF recently filed two challenges against the state’s new gerrymandered electoral maps, which were redrawn last year, and against Senate Bill 1—the omnibus anti-voting law that caused headaches during early voting in February. In the suits, MALDEF is alleging discrimination against constitutionally protected classes, including Latinos and disabled voters.

Perales, who moved to Texas from the East Coast in the mid-1990s, is no stranger to the tricks that state lawmakers use to dilute the voting power of the fast-growing, non-white electorate. The Observer spoke with her about her career, the threat against voting rights in Texas, and the power of the law to protect access to the ballot. " My first impressions were that we had a lot of untapped potential in the Latino community in terms of voter participation, and that there were many barriers to participation. I felt grateful for the opportunity to work on [these] issues because voting is one of the most important ways for each person to make a difference in public policy," she said of her first impressions of Texas. But laws ... like SB 1, or the strength of your vote, which is what happens in redistricting. We also dealt a couple of years ago with Texas purging voters off the rolls. The actions of public officials can affect if you even have the opportunity to vote because if you’re purged off the voter list improperly—you should be registered, you took the time and effort to do so—you can’t participate at all. So there are different points where the state can create barriers, and all of it affects Texas’ political future."