© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.
By Natalie Posgate
(July 16) – Bill Brewer and his team of lawyers are having a busy summer. The Dallas firm underwent a massive branding facelift, including a name change. They moved their offices, gained a score of lateral hires and took the bar exam in London.
And this week, Brewer was hired by rapper 50 Cent to defend him in appealing a $5 million judgment for providing commentary on a sex tape.
But none of these milestones have diverted Brewer, Attorneys & Counselors from one of its most impassioned causes: representing the rights of ethnic minorities who feel Texas municipalities are violating the federal Voting Rights Act in their efforts to crack down on illegal immigration.
The law firm scored its most recent win Tuesday night in its case against the City of Grand Prairie. City council members agreed at a meeting to redraw the city’s voting districts to give Grand Prairie Hispanics a fairer shot at being elected in Districts 3 and 5 in order to settle the lawsuit, which was filed this spring.
“Our client is pleased that the Grand Prairie City Council agreed to create two new majority Latino electoral districts,” Mr. Brewer, one of the attorneys for plaintiff Victor Rodriguez, said in a written statement. “The new districts will provide the city’s Latino residents a greater opportunity to participate in the political process. We also hope that the Council’s actions will be instructive to other cities and school districts across the state.”
The Grand Prairie case is just one of two lawsuits the Brewer firm has filed recently. The other, filed against the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District, could go to trial later this year.
Both lawsuits allege the defendants violated federal law by using an at-large voting system instead of a single-member district. The result, the Brewer firm alleges, is discrimination against the cities’ Latinos because the system makes it nearly impossible for the minority group to be elected to the school board or city council.
The lawsuits are just the latest installments of a successful parade of Texas voting rights wins for the Brewer Storefront – the firm’s public service affiliate that handles all pro bono cases.
The Storefront has also succeeded in securing single-member district election plans in Farmers Branch’s city council, Irving’s school district and city council and Grand Prairie’s school district, and has seen fast results from the wins.
Most recently, on May 9, David Espinosa won the election for the District 5 seat on the Grand Prairie school board, defeating incumbent Burke Hall. In May 2013, Ana Reyes became the first Hispanic ever elected to Farmers Branch City Council when she defeated William Capener in District 1.
Firm spokesman Travis Carter said the firm’s professionals, collectively, can invest up to 3,000 hours on a Voting Rights Act case that goes all the way to trial.
The two current lawsuits, which are both assigned to U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater, note that the Latino communities in both Farmers Branch and Grand Prairie have been unable to elect a Latino candidate of their choice for more than 20 years, despite the fact that Hispanics make up for close to half – if not more – of the overall population in both cities and their school districts.
“When you deny over a long period of time a significant portion of any community an opportunity to participate, it actually rips the community apart,” Brewer told The Texas Lawbook in a previous interview. “All the evidence is there that the extent to which any new group is invited to participate, and begins to participate, [will] thrive. And frankly, before you know it, we’re all just people living in the community together.”
Jack Ternan, another partner at the Brewer firm, agreed. Ternan manages the docket at the Brewer Storefront.
“Just one seat at the table makes all the difference,” Ternan said.
The Storefront’s two lawsuits come at a time when the nationwide discussion of voting rights could not be more relevant – or debated.
On Aug. 6, the nation celebrates the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In late June, Congress filed legislation to update parts of the law that many members argue the U.S. Supreme Court destroyed two years ago in the controversial Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder ruling. Minority activists in the states affected by the ruling continue to fight Voting Rights issues in court – the most recent being a federal trial that started this week in North Carolina.
Brewer said his firm remains passionate about voting rights work because it’s “critically important to the political landscape in Texas” and is “ground zero” for the conversation about how Texas will better accommodate its newest class of citizens from south of the border.
“It is necessary that we view their participation in our state in the future as enriching of all our experience,” he said. “The constitution requires it. The laws require it. There is no alternative. You can’t turn back the clock and frankly you shouldn’t want to.”
Austin attorney Bob Heath, who defended Grand Prairie and its city council in the case that entered settlement talks, said he thinks the outcome was a good compromise.
The city will continue to operate by its six single-member and two at-large member system. The Grand Prairie mayor is also elected citywide. Plaintiff Rodriguez had sought in his lawsuit to make all of the eight city council positions single-member districts and remedy a 2011 redistricting the city implemented that Rodriguez claimed diluted the Latino vote. Both parties agreed to the redistricting agreement to settle the lawsuit.
“We didn’t have to fight [the end of this] through a lawsuit, so it’s something that works out for everyone,” said Heath, a partner at Bickerstaff Heath Delgado Acosta.
Heath also served as defense counsel on most of the previous voting rights cases the Brewer Storefront has brought.
Attempts to set up an interview with CFBISD’s attorney, Meredith Prykryl Walker of the Irving firm Walsh Gallegos Trevińo Russo & Kyle, were unsuccessful. In a June 12 reply brief, Walker provided a general denial of the lead plaintiff, Guillermo Ramos’ allegations.
Ramos, who grew up attending schools in CFBISD, said he felt inspired to challenge the school district’s electoral system because he knows first-hand the benefits children can reap when their parents are involved with their schools and teachers.
Ramos, a son of Peruvian immigrants, said his parents “forced themselves” to speak to his teachers despite it being uncomfortable because they knew it would have a positive impact. He said his parents’ involvement with his schooling had a direct impact on his success in the classroom and his ability to one day become a lawyer.
“I was fortunate to have that, but it doesn’t mean other Latinos’ parents will have the courage [to get involved with schools],” said Ramos, who practices consumer law in Farmers Branch at a law firm he founded. “I feel it would facilitate [Latino parent participation] if [Carrollton-Farmers Branch] had a more diverse school board.”
Ramos knew to call the Brewer firm for help because they worked together in another tense legal battle against the City of Farmers Branch to eliminate a city ordinance that was found unconstitutional. The ordinance sought to ban landlords from renting out apartments and houses to illegal immigrants.
A Dallas federal court banned the ordinance from going into effect, and the ruling survived in both the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court when the city tried to appeal the decision.
Manuel Benavidez, who served as the lead plaintiff in the Irving litigation, said he had been trying for years to reform the city’s election system by the time the Brewer Storefront stepped in to help.
“I couldn’t find anybody who would take me seriously,” said Benavidez, who unsuccessfully ran for the Irving school board three times. “When I talked to [the firm], everything opened up.”
When asked what would have happened if the Brewer firm had not come forward to represent him in the litigation, Benavidez said, “Nothing. A big zero. It’s as simple as that, a big zero.”
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