In his letter to Ingram, Perez said that, according to the state’s own data, Hispanic voters in Texas are much more likely than a non-Hispanic voters to lack the required identification.
Civil rights groups praised the Justice Department’s action.
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“Texas’s voter ID law would prevent countless Latinos, African Americans, elderly citizens and others from casting their ballot,” said Katie O’Connor, a staff lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project. “We’re pleased the Department of Justice has recognized the harms this discriminatory law would have on people’s fundamental right to vote.”
NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous said the challenge ensures that “the integrity of our election process remains intact.”
But supporters of the voter ID laws criticized the federal action as “purely political.”
“Today’s decision reeks of politics and appears to be an effort by the Department of Justice to carry water for the President’s reelection campaign,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement.
Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, accused the Justice Department of playing “statistical games” and said the decision was based on “ideology.”
“The Texas law isn’t any different than the Georgia and Indiana voter ID laws, and both of those laws have been in place more than five years,” he said. “Turnout of Hispanics and blacks went up dramatically after voter ID laws went into place. The Justice Department is ignoring all that.”
Georgia’s law required and received federal approval under the George W. Bush administration. The decisions are made on a state-by-state basis.
Laws approved last year in Mississippi and Alabama also require federal approval but have not been submitted to the Justice Department.
It is unclear whether the four states that passed voter ID laws that are not subject to the Voting Rights Act requirement — Kansas, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Wisconsin — will face federal challenges. Justice lawyers could file suit under a different provision of the act, but the department has not indicated whether it will do so. Wisconsin’s law has been blocked by two state judges.
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