The Democrats in the Texas legislature lacked the votes to block SB14, the Texas voter id law but they did a good job of building a legislative history record by raising issues and concerns about the bill and proposing solutions to address such concerns. All or most of these proposed amendments were killed or voted down with no debate or comment. A state representative from Fort Bend County (Ron Reynolds) told me that one of my law school classmates (Kirk Watson) and the other Texas Democrats did a good job of trying to build a record in the legislative history to show that the true intent of SB14 was to keep nuns, the poor, the old and minorities from voting.
In its latest filing the DOJ is making used of this record to try to justify taking the depositions of 14 republican legislators including State Sen. Dan Patrick (a real idiot). http://txredistricting.org/post/20906479573/doj-says-circumstances-around-enactment-of-texas-voter
The Department of Justice told the panel in the Texas voter ID case in a brief filed Wednesday that depositions of Texas legislators were needed because even on the limited public record, there was “substantial indicia of discriminatory purpose, including the anticipated effect of S.B. 14, the historical background leading up to passage of the bill, and the nature of legislative debate.”
The State of Texas had earlier asked the court to block the depositions of 14 Republican legislators involved with the voter ID bill’s process through the legislature.
The DOJ brief cited, among other things, the failure of bill proponents to address substantive concerns or answer questions in floor debate about the bill’s impact on minority voters, the refusal to consider amendments that would have lessened the impact on indigent voters, and the refusal to fund studies to track the law’s impact or to education programs targeted at low-income and minority voters.
DOJ said that the state’s request to block the depositions sought “to shield from discovery the very witnesses it identified in its initial disclosures and responses to interrogatories” and that the “facts are more than sufficient to demonstrate that depositions of Texas state legislators and discovery of the documents lawmakers considered are warranted.”
Here is a link to the DOJ filing
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxeOfQQnUr_gVllfRG4xcWI3U1E/edit?pli=1 It appears that Kirk Watson and the other Democrats in the Texas legislature did a good job of building a record of discriminatory intent and now the DOJ is using that record.
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