Breaking from a recent pattern of weakening protections for voters of color, the U.S. Supreme Court last week left intact a key portion of the federal Voting Rights Act. The decision’s importance in ongoing litigation over the political maps Texas drew in 2021 will largely be felt in what didn’t happen.....

The Texas redistricting case is actually a set of consolidated lawsuits brought by individual Texans, organizations that represent Texans of color, the Texas NAACP and the U.S. Department of Justice, among others, who claim the Texas Legislature discriminated against voters of color in its 2021 map drawing.

The updated maps were meant to reflect the explosive growth captured in the 2020 census, almost all of it driven by Texans of color. But the Republican-drawn maps largely serve to bolster the party’s dominance, giving white voters even greater control of political districts throughout the state.....

The federal three-judge panel considering the case canceled a September 2022 trial a month before it was set to begin after disputes over discovery left both the state and the various plaintiff groups questioning whether they’d have enough time to prepare to make their cases in a federal courtroom in El Paso.

At issue are subpoenas and motions to compel certain documents from legislators and third parties. The state and the plaintiffs are also quarreling over lawmakers’ assertions during depositions of what’s known as legislative privilege, which allows legislators to keep secret their communications on policy along with their “thoughts and mental impressions.”....

The Senate’s chief map-drawer, Joan Huffman, a Republican from Houston, also said throughout the redistricting process that the maps were drawn “race blind” but were presented to legal counsel who cleared them as compliant with federal law meant to protect voters of color from discrimination. Huffman repeatedly declined to disclose how they reached that conclusion, though.