Both the DOJ and the private plaintiffs are seeking to cause Texas to be subject to Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act in the both the Texas redistricting case and the voter id case. There is very little law on Section 3 because the DOJ normally relied on Section 5 of the VRA.

To some degree the courts may be responding to the damage done by the SCOTUS' ruling on Section 5 of the VRA

It appears that this city had committed so many violations that it decided to consent to being "bailed in".

Texas and North Carolina are fighting the bail in remedy and this case shows that the "bail in" remedy can be imposed by the Courts. If the DOJ and/or the private plaintiffs win, the entire states of Texas and North Carolina will be subject to the pre-clearance requirements of the Voting Rights Act

Now we have to call them racists. So be it.

In the case of Texas it is difficult to not call the Texas GOP a bunch of racists.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Alabama on Monday reinstated federal oversight over the voting practices of a city there, in what election law specialists said was the first such move since the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act in June.

Judge Callie V. S. Granade, of Federal District Court in Mobile, used a mechanism in the law that the Supreme Court had left untouched, Section 3, which allows jurisdictions that have intentionally discriminated against minority voters to be “bailed in” to the oversight requirements.

Relying on Section 3, Judge Granade ordered the city, Evergreen, to submit some changes in voting procedures to the Department of Justice or a federal court for review before they can go into effect.

“This is a major win for the people of Evergreen,” said John K. Tanner, a lawyer for the plaintiffs and a former chief of the Justice Department’s voting section. But he added that piecemeal litigation under Section 3 was no substitute for a general requirement that states and localities designated by Congress be subject to federal oversight.

Slowly it turns.

4 & 5 basically said that a state's condition in 1962 determines its current liability. Getting rid of that actually lets DOJ proceed more broadly (eg, against Ohio, if needs be...) But, then, it becomes a tedious "one at a time" process, which has problems.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively eliminated federal oversight of voting rights, at least temporarily. States and cities wasted no time in using the ruling to revive their most restrictive, discriminatory laws. But while the ruling neutered the efficacy of one key section of the Act, Section 5, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder acted swiftly to bring some jurisdictions back under the federal umbrella using another section that didn’t get much play before, Section 3.

On Monday, a federal judge used that section to order Evergreen, Ala., officials to clear several changes with the Department of Justice before they go into effect, in what may be the first instance of revived federal preclearance after the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in June invalidated the formula that determined which jurisdictions have a history of voting laws that disfavor minorities, and were thus subject to federal “preclearance” of any changes to their voting laws. That means that, while preclearance is still permissible, Congress would have to come up with a new formula for the key preclearance prong, Section 5, to have effect. But under Section 3, which was rarely used prior to the high court’s June decision, the Department of Justice can move to individually bring jurisdictions back under federal preclearance through what is known as a “bail-in” if it determines that “violations of the fourteenth or fifteenth amendment justifying equitable relief have occurred.”