Are white voters in Dallas County being discriminated against?

That question, which might cause some to chuckle, will be answered after a trial starting April 16 that could change the face of the voting rights struggle in America.

Four white residents are suing Dallas County, claiming that the current boundaries of county commissioner districts violate their voting rights. The case is believed to be one of the first in the nation where a group of whites is seeking protection under the Voting Rights Act.

The lawsuit foreshadows a potential turnabout in Texas' and the nation's racial politics. As Hispanics, blacks and other minorities close in on making America a country where minorities make up the majority, some whites are attempting to use civil rights laws to protect themselves from what they see as discrimination.

Dallas County, once dominated by white Republicans until demographic shifts paved the way for Democrats, is the ideal testing ground for such a case.

"There will be people who look up and say 'oh, come on,' but the facts are clear and it should not matter who is on the short end of the stick," said Dallas lawyer Dan Morenoff, executive director of the Equal Voting Rights Institute. "The whole point is to assure state and local government can't rig elections against races they don't like."

The white residents are backed by the Equal Voting Rights Institute. They are asking the court that the current Commissioners Court boundaries, approved in 2011, be redrawn to allow white residents to elect the commissioner of their choice.

The four plaintiffs in the case — Ann Harding, Gregory Jacobs, Holly Knight Morse and Johannes Schroer — referred questions to their lawyer.

Lawyers for Dallas County declined to comment on the lawsuit and upcoming trial. Matt Angle, director of the Lone Star Project and developer of the map, is a witness in the case and also declined to comment. In their effort to get the case dismissed, lawyers for the county wrote, "This amended complaint does not remotely approach establishing a violation of federal law."

U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater disagreed and allowed the lawsuit to move forward.

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said the Commissioners Court does not discriminate against voters of any race, pointing out that while the county is mostly minority, three people on the five-member court are white.

"The Voting Rights Act was developed to ensure that groups that have been historically discriminated against would not have their voting rights abridged," Jenkins said. "Even if you extend it to that group, non-Hispanic Anglos are oversampled as a group."

Hard case to make

Redistricting experts say the plaintiffs will have a hard time prevailing over the county. The Voting Rights Act, in part, protects victims of historical and systemic discrimination. White voters don't fall in that class. A challenge to the maps on grounds that the white residents' constitutional rights were violated has already faded.

"That's a pretty high hurdle to overcome," said Michael Li, an election law expert and senior counsel for the Brennan Center's Democracy Program at New York University. "There hasn't been a history of discrimination against white voters in Dallas County."

Justin Levitt, associate dean for research at Loyola University in Los Angeles, agreed.

"You have to prove that the government intentionally took action against people because of their race. That is going to be much harder to demonstrate," he said. "The case is going to turn on whether there is a history of discrimination against Anglos or present-day signs of discrimination."

But Levitt said the loss of a case doesn't mean that white voters in Dallas County were not mistreated, particularly where politics is involved.

"Even when the law doesn't speak to misconduct, there still could be misconduct," he said. "It might mean the lawsuit loses, but it doesn't mean that it's not legitimate."

Democrats take control

In 2010, Elba Garcia, a former Dallas City Council member, beat Republican Ken Mayfield to give Democrats a 3-2 majority on the court.

Armed with that majority, Democrats took control of the redistricting process and were able to change the boundaries to assure a 4-1 supermajority. Those maps are the subject of the lawsuit.

At the time, the two Republicans on the court, Maurine Dickey and Mike Cantrell, agreed that Republicans would get only one solid district.

"We could have approved districts where no Republicans are represented," said Jenkins, who in 2010 defeated incumbent Democrat Jim Foster and GOP challenger Wade Emmert to win the seat. "They wanted it to be one Republican district, but to the detriment of each other."

Dickey, who retired after her term ended in 2012, was outraged when she saw the final map, which ended up placing Cantrell in a solidly Republican district that stretched from west to east across northern Dallas County, from Coppell to Richardson and Rowlett, dipping down in the middle through North Dallas and into the Park Cities.

The commissioners also developed an ethnically diverse district that was ultimately won by Democrat Theresa Daniel that included parts of east and northeast Dallas and Garland and Mesquite.

Democrats surround Dallas County Commissioner Mike Cantrell of District 2, the only Republican on the Dallas County Commissioners' Court. From left to right, Commissioner Theresa Daniel, Cantrell, County Judge Clay Jenkins, John Wiley Price and Elba Garcia. (David Woo / Staff Photographer)

Four years later, the conservative Equal Voting Rights Institute sued the county over the 2011 map.

Has white voting power diminished?

"Like something out of the bad old days, a southern electoral body plays naked racial politics, intentionally using its power to minimize a dissenting race's political sway," the lawsuit begins. "That's not history — it's today's Dallas County."

The lawsuit argues that the political clout of white voters has been purposefully diminished. Whites in Dallas County overwhelmingly vote for Republicans, the suit says, while blacks and Hispanics tend to vote for Democrats. The 4-to-1 Democrat-to-Republican ratio is a sign that whites have become disenfranchised, the suit says.

"The plaintiffs' view is that a map was drawn on the basis of race to make sure a group couldn't elect the candidate of their choice," Morenoff said. "We think the law is pretty clear that it's illegal. We're making the same arguments that plaintiffs have made in Texas the past few decades. The law protects racial minorities whoever they are."

But a white majority exists on the Commissioners Court even though Hispanics represent the largest racial group in the county. According to the U.S. Census, Hispanics make up 39 percent of the county population. The county is 33 percent white and 22 percent black.

Jenkins, Daniel and Cantrell are white. Daniel is a Democrat and Cantrell is a Republican. There is one black commissioner, Democrat John Wiley Price, and one Hispanic commissioner, Garcia, a Democrat.

The plaintiffs are arguing that white conservatives were not able to elect their candidate of choice.

Whites make up 48 percent of Dallas County voters, but essentially elect 25 percent (one commissioner) of the court, the lawsuit states.

Many white voters were packed into precincts controlled by Daniel, Price and Garcia. And others had their votes wasted after being packed into Cantrell's Precinct 2, the lawsuit says.

Lawyers for the county disagreed in a court filing.

"Plaintiffs' amended complaint fails to allege or demonstrate how the currently elected County Commissioners are not the candidate of choice of Anglo voters," they wrote. "Even if the five commissioners are the candidates of choice of African-American and Latino voters, that fact does not preclude those Commissioners from also being the candidates of choice of Anglo voters."

The trial is expected to take four days.

Li, the election law expert who spent 10 years in Dallas as a lawyer for Baker Botts, says redistricting cases like the one in Dallas County could evolve into referendums on partisan gerrymandering. Two such cases are before the U.S. Supreme Court.

"In the future, instead of race-based claims, they may claim that there was partisan gerrymandering," Li said.

Morenoff's group predicted more battles to come.

"America has seen vast demographic changes and begun to enter a more diverse future," according to a statement on the Equal Voting Rights Institute's website. "In this more diverse landscape, what race is at risk of targeting by those in power depends on facts on the ground."

The institute has a board of directors that once included conservative state Rep. Matt Rinaldi, R-Irving. One of its members, Dallas lawyer Elizabeth Alvarez Bingham, is a former candidate for chairwoman of the Dallas County Republican Party. She's also the lawyer handling the suit that seeks to remove over 80 Democrats from the November election ballot because Democratic Party chairwoman Carol Donovan didn't sign their candidate petitions before forwarding them to the secretary of state. Democrats say her signature is not required by law.

The group's chairman of the board, Eric Hall, is a black man from Birmingham, Ala., who says that city's tainted record with civil rights made him interested in protecting the voting rights of everyone.

"Equal protection means equal protection," he said. "We need to make sure we protect everybody."

Read the lawsuit and Dallas County's response here: