View a copy of the petition here.
The Mexican American Legislative Caucus (MALC) filed suit against the State of Texas to prevent the use of flawed census data. During the decennial census, standard process and procedure was not followed which resulted in a substantial undercount of the Latino population.
Historically, the Census Bureau has recognized that some populations are more difficult to count than others. One hard-to-count population are the Texans living in suburban unincorporated subdivisions primarily located along the Texas-Mexican border, often referred to as the colonias.
After promoting, advertising and educating the community in these counties on the mail-in counting strategy, the Census Bureau announced on the day the Census was to commence that this strategy would not be deployed for the colonias. The decision to forego one of the most relied upon strategies for the very population known to be hardest to count had a devastating effect on the ability of securing a complete count. The resulting undercount of Latinos along the border region of Texas was between 4% and 8% of the population for the region.
MALC v. Texas impacts any maps being put forth in committee that use the flawed Census data.
“MALC has always been committed to a redistricting process that is fair and representative. We cannot allow flawed data to dilute the voting rights of the Texas Latino community due to improper processes on the part of the Census Bureau in Texas” said Chairman Trey Martinez Fischer.
