Texas Supreme Court dismisses Harlingen map lawsuit

The Texas Supreme Court has dismissed a lawsuit charging the city’s new single-member district boundaries unconstitutionally moved thousands of District 2 registered voters into District 3, denying their right to vote for commissioner in the May election. On Friday, the court didn’t issue an opinion after dropping the lawsuit filed Monday by former City Commissioners Tudor Uhlhorn and Jay Meade and their wives, requesting justices void the new single-member district boundaries or order commissioners call a special May 7 election for the city’s five districts. In response, Uhlhorn, his wife Hellen, and Meade and his wife Elena, issued a statement standing by their charge of voter suppression while arguing Commissioners Richard Uribe, Frank Puente and Rene Perez proposed their new district map without giving residents time to address their concerns.

“Obviously, we are disappointed with the Supreme Court’s decision and do not agree with it,” Uhlhorn, Meade and their wives stated. “We suspect the court felt there was just too little time to decide such an important voting rights issue. Perhaps, that is exactly why the three commissioners pushing this unconstitutional plan waited until just a few days before the candidate filing period begins (Jan. 19) to even present their plan. The Census data required for redistricting has been available since last September but the plan supported by Commissioners Uribe, Puente, and Perez was never made publicly available until the day before it was adopted on Jan. 5.” “Although we are deeply disappointed by the Supreme Court’s ‘hands-off’ decision, we believe this effort focused attention on the facts that Commissioners Uribe, Puente and Perez don’t really care whether all Harlingen citizens get to vote and they were just fine with no public input into their secret plan and with no one knowing what they were up to until they thought it was too late to do anything about it. It is not too late for Harlingen citizens to let them know how they feel about what has occurred.”