The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the State of Texas this week claiming that its newly developed electoral maps for U.S and state voting districts violate Section Two of the Voting Rights Act and asked for a halt on all elections in the state until an interim map is configured.

The lawsuit filed in the federal court of El Paso argues that state Republicans “deliberately” redrew the 23rd congressional district an area of west Texas with growing Latino voters; “surgically excised minority communities” from the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex; and did not adequately draw district lines in Harris County to give the growing Latino voting-age population a fair chance of electing their favored candidate.

The Department of Justice argued that the process to implement these new district lines was an “extraordinarily rapid and opaque legislative process.” This process also expanded the Congressional delegation from 36 to 38 seats, with the additional seats to go to “Anglo voting majorities.”

According to the complaint filed earlier this week, Texas “is one of the most diverse states in the nation” with non-Latino White Texans making up less than 40% of the population. Over the last ten years, Texas grew by four million in population, with minority groups accounting for 95% of that growth. However, these new maps created by the Texas legislature leave no new majority-minority districts.

With the new redistricting, Republicans have a majority hold on 25 of the 38 congressional seats, which will help them maintain a majority in the state legislature, regardless of the actual political makeup of the state.

The Voting Rights Act, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, furthered the goals of the 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution by prohibiting discrimination in voting practices. The Act banned the use of literacy tests, gave the federal government certain levels of oversight on voter registration, and gave the U.S. attorney general the right to investigate the use of poll taxes.

The Justice Department argues that Texas’s new legislation violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices that discriminate based on race.

“The complaint that we filed… alleges that Texas… [created] redistricting plans that deny or abridge the rights of Latino and Black voters to vote on account of their race, color or membership in a language or minority group,” Merrick Garland, the attorney general, told reporters.

Vanita Gupta, the United States Associate Attorney General and the number three in the Justice Department, noted that Texas is a “repeat offender when it comes to voting discrimination.”

The lawsuit cited 52 U.S.C. section 10301(b) when alleging a violation of Section 2, that “based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political process leading to nomination or election in the State or political subdivision are not equally open to participation by members of a class of citizens protected by [Section 2] in that its members have less opportunity than others.”

However, in July of this year, the Supreme court decision in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee significantly narrowed the scope of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Rather than taking into consideration “all relevant circumstances” when evaluating a state’s voter districting practices, the section now only prohibits laws that deliberately make it harder for minority voters.

In 2013, the US Supreme Court revoked a provision of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder that would require states with a history of discriminatory policies to have their changes to maps approved by the federal government prior to going into effect. Before this 2013 change by the Supreme Court, this move by Texas would never have been allowed to be implemented.

Some critics of the move by the Justice Department to sue Texas argue that this lawsuit is a result of a “broken” Voting Rights Act and put the majority of the responsibility on Congress to fix it, rather than states like Arizona, Florida, and Texas, which have no real incentive to do so.