AUSTIN — Texans are on the hook for $3.9 million in costs for Attorney General Greg Abbott to fight for Republican-championed redistricting maps, and that number will grow as a years-long legal fight continues Monday in federal court in San Antonio.

A big tally is expected in complicated redistricting litigation, say experts, particularly with the Abbott legal team's aggressive defense of the congressional and legislative maps approved by the GOP-majority Legislature.

“Abbott's attitude has been very much 'I'm going to litigate this to the ends of the earth,'” said Michael Li, redistricting counsel at the Brennan Center at New York University School of Law.

Abbott's staff said he's doing his job as the state's top lawyer and that the responsibility for the costs lies with those who have challenged the maps. Democrats, including those who have mounted redistricting challenges, said Abbott is using taxpayer funds as an ATM to defend discriminatory maps.

Minority and civil rights groups, including the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Mexican American Legislative Caucus and the NAACP, originally mounted the redistricting challenges in 2011.

Abbott's Democratic opponent in the governor's race, Sen. Wendy Davis, also sued and beat back changes to her Senate district. She and several other plaintiffs were awarded attorney's fees that aren't included in the total because Abbott's office is appealing.

The $3.9 million tab so far, provided to the San Antonio Express-News in response to a public-information act request, includes more than $2.2 million in costs for in-house salary and overhead at the state attorney general's office.

Abbott spokeswoman Lauren Bean said internal costs include employee salaries that would have been incurred regardless of the cases. The state lawyers have spent 26,986 hours on redistricting litigation.The total also includes $887,327 for high-powered outside counsel, $447,567 for expert witnesses and $339,996 for travel and other expenses.

“This litigation is fairly complex. It has a number of issues with voting rights concerns, and it has been drawn out over a long period of time. Those two things together, I think, are really what are driving the cost here of this effort,” said Michael McDonald, a redistricting expert who is associate professor of political science at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

McDonald has served as an expert in redistricting cases, including for the state Democratic Party in the case on the issue of partisan gerrymandering in the 2013 maps, which has been dismissed from the litigation.

“This is litigation that's expensive. The hourly rates for the lawyers and the consultants — this is not a minimum-wage job,” he said.

Some outside lawyers hired by Abbott have billed in excess of $500 an hour, according to records released to the Express-News in 2012.

Bean, noting that the state is the defendant in the ongoing redistricting cases, contended that “the parties that filed these politically motivated lawsuits ... are solely responsible for the fact that the state is having to bear the cost of defending litigation against a redistricting law that was duly enacted by the Texas Legislature.”

What's worse, in her view, is that “the plaintiffs are also demanding that Texas taxpayers pick up the tab for their plaintiff lawyers.”

Davis campaign spokeswoman Rebecca Acuña said the senator from Fort Worth “successfully fought to stop a Senate redistricting map that would have essentially disenfranchised thousands of Texans and split up communities.”

“Even though Greg Abbott lost that fight, he continues to defend other intentionally discriminatory voting maps,” she said.

In what Li, the redistricting counsel at New York University, called an example of the state's aggressive court strategy, Abbott in 2011 filed a federal lawsuit to get a federal stamp of approval of the state's maps from a court, rather than going through the administrative process at the U.S. Justice Department.

He didn't get federal “pre-clearance,” required of states with a history of discrimination. But the formula used to determine if a state is required to obtain pre-clearance to make voting changes was effectively struck down by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a separate case.

Li said Abbott's aggressive strategy has worked in the state's favor on occasion, pointing out that the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Texas in rejecting an initial set of interim maps drawn by a three-judge panel in San Antonio in 2012.

“They've had some victories, though mostly they've come out with losses,” he said.

Texas' current fight over political maps is unfolding in stages.

The Justice Department and minority groups are challenging now-defunct maps passed by the Legislature in 2011 and a set of political boundaries lawmakers ratified in 2013, which are almost identical to interim maps drawn by the three-judge panel and used in 2012.

The first phase of the trial started last month in San Antonio with a focus on state House maps drawn in 2011. The second stage starts Monday and will deal with congressional maps passed in 2011.

Though the 2011 maps were never enacted and have since been replaced, the Justice Department and civil rights groups aim to prove that the GOP-majority Legislature drew the boundaries with the intention of discriminating against minorities and diluting their voting power. Their hope is to get a ruling against the state on the 2011 maps that would require Texas to again meet federal pre-clearance review before enacting new voting laws.

The three-judge panel is expected to take up the third stage of the trial in the fall to consider claims against Texas House and congressional maps enacted in 2013.

Regardless of the ruling from the court in San Antonio, the case is expected to be appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, experts said.

Democratic state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer of San Antonio, chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, said it's apparent that minority groups have a strong challenge, pointing out that the case has now been disputed for years at various courts.

“Every taxpayer in Texas who has to underwrite these costs should be disgusted,” he said. “Greg Abbott has the ATM of the state of Texas. He feels he can spend as much as he wants to justify his means and win an election in the process.”

Republican Party of Texas Chairman Steve Munisteri said Abbott is working to uphold “the will of the people as expressed through the Legislature,” as is his duty.

“I would say it's money necessarily spent. The attorney general cannot decide not to defend these suits. ... For him not to defend that would be a dereliction of duty,” Munisteri said.

pfikac@express-news.net

drauf@express-news.net

Twitter: @pfikac

Twitter: @davidsrauf