The Department of Justice is bringing a lawsuit against Hazleton, PA because it said its city council is not Hispanic enough.
The lawsuit said not enough “Hispanic-preferred candidates” are winning, but did not define what a Hispanic preferred candidate is,” The Daily Caller reported.
“The DOJ sued the majority-Hispanic town Tuesday over its at-large election system in which voters across Hazelton vote to elect each district’s city council member, alleging it does not give Hispanics a fair chance at participation and violates a section of the Voting Rights Act that bans restricting voters based on race. The complaint fails to prove illegal discrimination and appears ‘meritless’ on its face, legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation,” the report said.
“What the complaint fails entirely to address is that Hispanic candidates are losing races not because of their race, but due to politics — if they run as Democrats, they are going to lose,” senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Hans von Spakovsky, a former counsel for the Department of Justice, said to the DCNF.
“In the 2023 election for the city’s mayor, the incumbent Republican, Jeff Cusat, won in a landslide with 61% of the vote,” he said. “The Democratic Hispanic who ran against him, Vianney Castro, received only 28% of the vote.”
The city voted for former Democrat presidential nominee and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016, but voted for President-elect Donald Trump by 55 percent in 2020 and by 62 percent in 2024.
“The 10-page lawsuit alleges societal discrimination has kept ‘Hispanic-preferred candidates’ from winning a single Hazleton city council seat. The DOJ did not define ‘Hispanic-preferred candidate’ in its lawsuit. The complaint also used the term ‘Hispanic-preferred Hispanic candidate,’” the report said.
The lawsuit said that “discrimination in education, employment, housing, and policing” and “disparities” between white and Hispanic residents are the reason that the city’s at-large election system is not Constitutional.
It admitted that there was “low turnout among Hispanic voters” but said that it was because of “obstacles to political participation.”
“Quite frankly, I don’t trust the narrative put forward by the Justice Department because I don’t trust the credibility of the lawyers inside the Civil Rights Division, where I used to work,” von Spakovsky said to the DCNF.
