Senate Judiciary Committee
April 1, 2021
Testimony of Anthony Gutierrez
on behalf of Common Cause Texas
in Opposition to Senate Bill 11
Common Cause Texas is a nonpartisan advocacy organization that works on a range of democracy reform issues. We work to create an open, honest, and accountable government that serves the public interest; promote equal rights, opportunity, and representation for all; and empower all people to make their voices heard in the political process.
Senate Bill 11 is another bill continuing the anti-democratic strategy of sacrificing crucial infrastructure in order to balance the scales in favor of partisan actors, Senate Bill seeks to blatantly gerrymander the Texas Court of Appeals districts, consolidating the number of court districts from 14 to 7, in a move that will bring harm to communities across Texas — with a majority of the harm being felt by Black and brown communities, as well as rural parts of the state, such as Texarkana, Tyler, Eastland and Waco.
The proposed map for Senate Bill 11 was drawn in an alarming closed-door process that not only excluded public input, but did not involve current sitting Justices — who were notified about the proposed map (committee substitute) via email on Monday, mere days before the hearing.
The changes brought by Senate Bill 11 would force many Texans to maneuver logistical nightmares, would remove the ability for community experts to be elected by their peers to serve as justices, and would make it increasingly difficult for judges of color to win elected office.
The Princeton Gerrymandering Project conducted a quick analysis of the current and proposed Committee Substitute Map for Senate Bill 11 to quickly assess differences in the composition of the electorate between the two maps. The findings include:
Less representation for minority populations
A decrease in total number of districts tends to increase representation for the majority, and reduces minority opportunity in representation. Measuring non-white population proportions for each district, the existing map comprised 5 out of 14 districts with over 50% non white voting age population, compared to 3 out of 7 in the proposed map. Similarly, the existing map has 3 districts with over 50% Hispanic voting age population (HVAP), compared to 2 out of 7 in the proposed map. Depending on the allocation of judgeships to the districts, this could result in minority populations having fewer opportunities to elect judges.
Diluting competitive districts
Defining the range of 45-55% Democratic vote share as the competitive range in a two-party election, we see that 6 out of 14 districts in the existing map, or 42.86%, are competitive. The proposal has only 2 of 7 districts in the competitive zone (24.57%), both of which are estimated to have only slight Democratic majorities.
Bias for Republican wins
The proposed map is projected to produce two Democratic districts, one more than the existing map; however, they are both much narrower wins than the current single Democratic district. On the other hand, there are six competitive Republican districts in the existing maps, and none in the proposed map. Thus, under the new map, all of the Republican-leaning districts are safe wins, while Democrats will have to fight to win their two seats. This means that in an R+4 electoral environment, the Republican party would be expected to win all judicial seats. The proposed map also scores worse than the existing map on a range of partisan metrics, including difference in average wins (16.36% vs 6.74%), seats bias (8.2% vs 5.81%), and mean-median difference (-1.5% vs 0.49%).
Senate Bill 11 is a blatant power grab that no one who is actually involved with these courts is clamoring for. This legislature still has a lot of work to do on real problems that impact Texans every day. They need to focus on those issues rather than wasting valuable time on a bill that serves only to enhance partisan advantage for the politicians in power.