The Washington Post has obtained an internal Justice Department Memo that indicates that the Justice Department staff charged with evaluating whether the Texas redistricting plan violated the Voting Rights Act unanimously found that the plan did violate the act. Not that anyone in the administration cared:

Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan.

The memo, unanimously endorsed by six lawyers and two analysts in the department’s voting section, said the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power in two congressional districts. It also said the plan eliminated several other districts in which minorities had a substantial, though not necessarily decisive, influence in elections.

…

Mark Posner, a longtime Justice Department lawyer who now teaches law at American University, said it was “highly unusual” for political appointees to overrule a unanimous finding such as the one in the Texas case.

“In this kind of situation, where everybody agrees at least on the staff level . . . that is a very, very strong case,” Posner said. “The fact that everybody agreed that there were reductions in minority voting strength, and that they were significant, raises a lot of questions as to why it was” approved, he said.

The decision to override is being defended by the administration. They point out that a federal lawsuit brought by Texas Democrats was not successful, though the case is on appeal to the Supreme Court. This memo, and any evidence that the Justice Department was wary of the plan, did not come out during that case, however. In fact, “the Justice Department’s approval of the redistricting plan … was valuable to Texas officials when they defended it in court.”

You might remember that when this happened, Democratic State Reps in Texas fled to Oklahoma to prevent the state legislature from passing the redistricting bill. Now that act of desperation is put into some context. Read the article, it’s got some other interesting tidbits.