Mark Henry - Galveston County Judge Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Seven, twenty two, our time here in Houston's point years.
We're joined by Judge Bark Henry of Galveston County, who says,
you can thank me now if you'd like for Texas
Redistrict thing, you're welcome or would you like to say
that yourself.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
I would absolutely like to say that, and I would
like a little credit.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
I got fifty Democrats to leave the state of Texas.

Speaker 4 (00:20):
How about that?

Speaker 3 (00:22):
You go?

Speaker 4 (00:22):
Unfortunately you didn't keep them out.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
No, they didn't come back.

Speaker 4 (00:26):
Yeah, they all came back. So refresh ourmentory.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
This goes back to nine or twenty twenty two, right
when when the Biden administration decided they were going to sue.
You'd redrawn the lines in Galveston County and they decided
to sue. Why did they want to sue you?

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Because they told me I had to draw a coalition district.
And a coalition district is legal fiction. It doesn't appear
anywhere in the Voting Rights Act. And I told them
I'm not going to do it. My lawyers said we
don't have to, and I'm not going to. So they
sued me and the little twenty six to twenty eight
year old Biden doj attorneys with their backpacks lost. So
as of last year, in twenty twenty four, the Fifth

(01:01):
Circuit Court of Appeal said, no more coalition districts. You've
got to get rid of them. So that's why Texas
is doing this, not because they can, because they have.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
To, right, And that's a great point to make, not
not doing it just because you can, but because you
have to. Now do you think of course, you know,
none of us are experts when it comes to other
state laws. But you know we have a Newsom as
you know, got this little plan that they worked out
to try to get those those five seats back. I
wonder if they are are you know, if they're redrawing

(01:30):
to have coalition districts to get five Republicans off the
rolls in California, then they're going to be going against
the law themselves, aren't they.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Well, California is just posturing. They have handcuffed themselves. They
cannot redistrict except every ten years, and it's by a committee,
it's not by their legislature. So all the stuff that
Governor Newsom is talking about is just posturing and training
to get himself on camera.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
He can't do what he's saying he's gonna.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Do Okay, Well, he's going to try, I guess, and
he'll probably look for a sympathetic judge. But sooner or
later this works its way through appeals. So the Galveston
County case took two years in order to go into effect.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
It took two years to get a verdict from the
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. We lost to the trial
court level, and we knew he would. He was tied
by the decision of a previous Fifth Circuit opinion back
in nineteen eighty eight or so Campus versus Baytown. But
when we went to the free judge panel, the three
judge panel said, we're bound by our previous president, but

(02:31):
we were wrong. Please ask for a full court hearing
and called a non bank hearing. So we did, and
the full court reversed a previous full court opinion.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
That's extremely rare, okay, And that's as far as it went.
Right after that, nobody pursued it any further. The Feds
didn't pursue it any further.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
After that, to a limited degree.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
They went to the US Supreme Court and said, would
you block their implementation? The US Supreme Court said no,
so it did make it to the Supreme Court briefly,
but they said no, we're not going to block it,
so it was on their radar momentarily. So this now
compels everyone under the jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit to
comply with no coalition districts, and that's also the law

(03:11):
in other places around the nation. I do think it
needs to go to the Supreme Court to get finality
and have one law standard across the United States.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
I was going to say at this point, we really
do need to have that finality, and I would think
part of what complicates all this is every state has
and by law, can have their own election laws. They
can they can have their own redistricting plans. They you know,
in every state can have different rules and they do.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yes, that's correct, But underneath the purview of the Fifth
Circuit Court of Appeals, you cannot have a coalition district now.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
All right, Joe Jenery, thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you, Jimmy,
take care.

Speaker 4 (03:46):
Galveston County Judge Mark Henry