The State of Texas violated the federal voting rights of an Indian woman who was prevented from receiving assistance from her son in interpreting her ballot, a U.S. appeals court has ruled.
Circuit Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Fifth Circuit of Appeals ruled that a Texas law requiring interpreters to be registered to vote in the county violated the Voting Rights Act (VRA): “We must conclude that the limitation on voter choice expressed in [the Texas Election Code] impermissibly narrows the right guaranteed by Section 208 of the VRA.”
The case centered around Mallika Das, who was unable to vote in Williamson County in October 2014 after the election officer refused to allow her son to interpret the ballot for her, as she had limited English language skills. The officer cited a Texas law that to “be eligible to serve as an interpreter, a person must be a registered voter of the county in which the voter needing the interpreter resides.”
The Organization of Chinese Americans, which advocates for Chinese and Asian Pacific Americans, sued the state alleging that the interpreter restriction deprived her of her federal rights. The state countered that the Voting Rights Act’s provisions for voter “assistance by a person of the voter’s choice” were limited to the literal act of marking the ballot inside the ballot box.
The core question in the case, the court said, was “how broadly to read the term ‘to vote’” in the Voting Rights Act.
Judge Higginbotham rejected the state’s narrow interpretation of the Voting Rights Act: “To vote … plainly contemplates more than the mechanical act of filling out the ballot sheet. It includes steps in the voting process before entering the ballot box, ‘registration,’ and it includes steps in the voting process after leaving the ballot box, ‘having such ballot counted properly.’ Indeed, the definition lists ‘casting a ballot’ as only one example in a nonexhaustive list of actions that qualify as voting.”
The ruling paves the way for broader assistance to voters with limited English language skills throughout Texas and perhaps other states. But Das will not be among its beneficiaries; she passed away while the suit was pending.