HOUSTON (CN) — Discrimination still festers in a Texas city that was the Ku Klux Klan’s state headquarters in the 1980s, a federal judge ruled, finding a redistricting plan spearheaded by its white mayor intentionally diluted the Hispanic vote.
Pasadena, pop. 149,285, part of greater Houston, is a Hispanic-majority city known for its refineries, chemical plants and strawberry festival. It was named after the California city.
The KKK had a bookstore in the middle of the town in the 1980s and intimidated Hispanic residents by burning crosses, carrying high-powered rifles in public and wearing their white robes on the street outside their headquarters building, according to testimony in a recent seven-day bench trial.
Hispanic residents complained several times in the 1990s about a cozy relationship between Klan members and the Pasadena Police Department, according to the Jan. 6 ruling by Chief U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal.
Despite the hostilities, Latinos kept moving to the city, drawn by its cheap housing and abundant jobs, and by 2010, they made up 62.1 percent of the population, according to the U.S. Census.
Years of discriminatory housing policies, however, have effectively created two cities in Pasadena, according to the case record.
“Most Latino residents live in North Pasadena, which is separated from the predominantly Anglo South Pasadena by the Spencer Highway. South Pasadena’s streets, sewage, recreation areas, and other basic infrastructure elements and amenities are much better than North Pasadena’s,” Rosenthal wrote in her 113-page ruling.
Pasadena City Councilman Cody Ray Wheeler testified that the city built new sidewalks in a north Pasadena neighborhood only after teachers at a middle school submitted a petition to the City Council, complaining that students had to walk in the street to get to school, and media outlets publicized the concerns.
Pasadena officials approved a redistricting map and plan in 2011 that created eight single-member districts for the City Council, under which Hispanic voters in 2013 “elected their candidates of choice in three of the four Latino-majority districts” and a Latino candidate with a white-sounding name, Wheeler, won another district.
With the city’s demographics shift reflected in the 2013 vote, Mayor Johnny Isbell saw the writing on the wall: that by 2015 a majority of the City Council would be the chosen candidates of Latino voters.
Isbell, a white man, was elected mayor in 2009 and reelected in 2013. He is term-limited and can’t run again in 2017. Eager to find a way to retain his power that often saw him casting the deciding 5-4 vote on issues before the City Council, Isbell got some unexpected help from the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a 5-4 ruling in 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby v. Holder that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which required some cities, counties and states with a history of voting discrimination to get federal permission to make any election-rule changes, was unconstitutional.
Within days of the ruling, Isbell asked the city staff to draw maps to see how a 6-2 district, with six single-member districts and two at-large districts, would look, according to Rosenthal’s ruling.