8 May 22 - 28, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents urban feeling than Dallas’ urban core. Some supporters conceded they’d like to have seen Dallas’ ordinance change go fur- ther; parking minimum requirements have been eliminated entirely in a growing num- ber of U.S. cities, including Austin; Birming- ham, Alabama; Lexington, Kentucky; San Francisco, California; and Hartford, Con- necticut. Brinda Gurumoorthy, a Dallas ISD teacher who does not own a car, told the council she is regularly forced to walk across sprawling blacktops that separate her desti- nation from her DART bus stop. Eliminating parking minimums could encourage more Dallasites to rely on transit. “Transit succeeds if and only if you have sensible parking and land use. … Parking reform would improve my life and the life of hundreds of current and future DART riders. Parking reform is pro- DART,” Gurumoorthy said. “People may be apprehensive about change, but we de- serve to reap the benefits that other cities have adopted.” Members of the Dallas Housing Coalition also rallied behind the ordinance change, ar- guing that parking is costly for a developer, and underutilized lots are space where addi- tional buildings could go. At a time when Dallas is desperately considering its han- dling of the statewide housing crisis, advo- cates urged the council to approve the measure as a way to encourage housing de- velopment. “These parking minimums may look neutral on paper, but they are not neutral in practice,” said Azael Alvarez. “They are pushing working-class people out of the city. … We don’t need a bulldozer anymore to dis- place a community, sometimes all it takes is a line in the code.” A handful of residents also spoke against the parking change, arguing that eliminating or lessening parking minimums would be punitive in some less-urbanized districts that lack robust access to transit. “Every part of the city is different, and being opposed to this is not just because we’re NIMBY’s, it’s because we aren’t ur- ban,” said Tom DuPree, a resident of North Dallas. “We don’t have mass transit, we don’t have bike lanes, in many cases we don’t even have sidewalks. So we really do have to drive. … That’s just the way we’re set up. We’re not a walking community by any stretch of the imagination.” ▼ POLITICS UNEQUAL REPRESENTATION GERRYMANDERING CASE BACKED BY LATINO CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS HEADS TO COURT. BY EMMA RUBY F our years and two elections have passed since Texas adopted new maps for the state House and Senate, con- gressional delegation and State Board of Ed- ucation. Now, a coalition of Latino civil rights organizations that say the redistrict- ing diluted the power of voters of color is getting its day in court. The lawsuit, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) v. Abbott, di- rectly challenges the Republican-drawn maps used to sort voters during state and federal elections in 2022 and 2024. The case is made up of a consolidated set of lawsuits that were all brought against the map draw- ings, which were approved by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in 2021. The Texas NAACP, the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, indi- vidual Texans and other groups are named plaintiffs. This week is the expected start of a four- week-long trial that will be heard by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. Political maps are redrawn every 10 years after new census data is released. Because of Texas’ rapid population growth in the years before the maps were drawn, two new U.S. House seats were included in the redistrict- ing, which was the biggest gain of any state during the reapportionment. But while ra- cial minorities made up the majority of that population growth, advocates flagged the maps for consolidating white, conservative power across the state by splitting up high minority populations. The civil and voting rights organizations that sued Texas argue that the districts are discriminatory toward minority voters, spe- cifically Latino voters, who saw a reduction in the number of districts across the state where they make up the majority population of eligible voters. “The current map packs Latino voters in both the Dallas-Fort Worth area and the Harris County area in such a way that it de- prives those communities of equal represen- tation that they are entitled to under the Voting Rights Act,” Marina Jenkins, execu- tive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, told reporters. “Texas has a long documented record of discrimination against Latino voters, but this case is about what’s been happening now, not about an- cient history.” The National Redistricting Foundation is representing plaintiffs in the congressional map complaint. According to the Texas Tri- bune, the 2021 redistricting maps reduced the number of congressional districts with a Hispanic voting majority from eight to seven. In addition to calling for the 2021 maps to be thrown out, the National Redis- tricting Foundation is also asking for two new “Latino opportunity districts” to be cre- ated, one in the Dallas-Fort Worth region and one in Harris County, to accurately re- flect Texas’s Latino population. U.S. census data shows that at some point in 2022, Latinos surpassed non-Hispanic whites to make up the biggest share of the Texas pop- ulation. But that large piece of the population pie isn’t reflected in the rooms where Texas’s lawmaking takes place. The state legislature continues to be overwhelmingly male and white, with Hispanic Texans claiming only 25% of Legislative seats, the Tribune reports. The same imbalance can be seen in the body representing Texas in Congress. “When deprived of representation in Congress, a community doesn’t have a say in Congress about the direction of this country. They do not have a voice to raise issues that Congress could address to help improve the lives of citizens in their community,” Jen- kins said. “This case isn’t just about the con- gressional map. It’s about representation and living up to the fundamental ideal that should guide our democracy, that every indi- vidual has the right to exercise self-determi- nation at the ballot box.” The Plaintiffs That Have Dropped Out Plaintiffs in the LULAC v. Abbott case are expected to begin taking the stand to testify against Texas’s gerrymandered districts next week, but some organizations once in- volved in the case will not be present. In December 2021, U.S. Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland announced that the De- partment of Justice had filed suit against Texas for violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits race-based discrimination in voting matters. Garland remarked that the maps were the first set drawn since the Supreme Court’s 2013 de- cision to eliminate a provision of the Vot- ing Rights Act that required the Department of Justice to approve redis- tricting plans, a provision Garland called “the department’s best tool for protecting voting rights.” “The complaint we filed today alleges that Texas has violated Section 2 by creat- ing redistricting plans that deny or abridge the rights of Latino and Black voters to vote on account of their race, color or member- ship in a language minority group,” Gar- land said. “The department’s career voting law experts have assessed Texas’s new re- districting plans and determined that they include districts that violate the Voting Rights Act.” In March of this year, though, the Depart- ment of Justice withdrew from the lawsuit. The decision to drop the case was the latest indication that President Donald Trump’s second administration would turn away from some of the voting rights initiatives started by President Joe Biden. Several other groups, such as the Fair Maps Texas Action Committee, OCA- Greater Houston, the North Texas chapter of the Asian Pacific Islander Americans Public Affairs Association and Engage Texas have also dropped out of the suit. “Unfortunately, this case has just taken so long that we’ve gone through two election cycles already where these voters are not be- ing given equal representation that they de- serve under the law,” Jenkins said. Unfair Park from p6 Jacob Vaughn In a 14-1 vote, the Dallas City Council decided it’s time to move away from being a car-centric city. Adobe Stock Texas’ population growth resulted in the addition of two new congressional districts in 2021.
