Nina Perales

District 23 and the Electoral Record

Nina Perales argued the District 23 claim in LULAC v. Perry before the United States Supreme Court. She represented the American GI Forum of Texas and showed how the 2003 map removed concentrated Latino communities from a district just as their registration and turnout created an effective opportunity to elect a preferred candidate.

The Court held that the dismantling of District 23 violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. On remand, a remedial map restored the district as a Latino opportunity district, and Ciro Rodriguez won the 2006 special-election runoff.

Arizona’s Federal Registration Form

Perales led MALDEF’s lower-court litigation challenging Arizona’s refusal to accept the federal voter-registration form without additional documentary proof of citizenship. MALDEF reported that more than 31,500 applications had been rejected under the requirement.

The Supreme Court ruled 7–2 that the National Voter Registration Act’s command to accept and use the federal form preempted Arizona’s additional documentary requirement for federal elections. The decision preserved access to the registration method Congress established.

Pasadena after Shelby County

The local election system in Pasadena, Texas, changed soon after the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder made the Voting Rights Act’s existing preclearance formula inoperative. Pasadena had elected eight council members from eight single-member districts. The city replaced that arrangement with six single-member districts and two at-large seats elected citywide. The legal question in Patino v. City of Pasadena was whether that change diluted Latino voting strength and whether the city had adopted it for a discriminatory purpose.

The demographic record measured the shift. Pasadena’s Latino citizen voting-age population grew from 18.7 percent in 1990 to approximately 48.2 percent during the 2011–2015 period. Under the eight-district system, Latino voters formed a majority in four districts. Under the hybrid system, they formed a majority in three. The two citywide seats required candidates preferred by Latino voters to prevail across an electorate in which racially polarized voting remained substantial. The change thus reduced the number of districts in which the growing Latino electorate had a practical opportunity to elect its preferred candidates.

The city defended the hybrid structure as a governance choice approved by Pasadena voters and argued that citywide members would answer to the whole municipality. It disputed that the plan violated Section 2 or was adopted with discriminatory intent. The plaintiffs relied on election analysis, the city’s history, departures in the decision-making process, and the timing after Shelby County. The trial record included Mayor Johnny Isbell’s statement that the Justice Department could no longer tell Pasadena what to do and an instruction to identify Hispanic surnames in election materials.

Alberto Patino and other Latino residents brought the case. Perales tried it with MALDEF lawyers Denise Hulett and Ernest Herrera. The defendant was the City of Pasadena. Its trial lawyers included Claude Heath and Gunnar Seaquist of Bickerstaff Heath Delgado Acosta and Kelly Sandill and Kathryn Ahlrich of Andrews Kurth. The plaintiffs had to prove both the practical electoral effect required for their Section 2 claim and the historical, procedural, and contemporaneous evidence supporting their intentional-discrimination claim.

After a bench trial, Chief Judge Lee H. Rosenthal found that the hybrid system violated Section 2 and had been adopted with discriminatory intent. The court restored the eight single-member districts. It also applied Section 3(c) of the Voting Rights Act, requiring Pasadena to obtain federal approval before implementing specified future election changes. The remedy responded to the particular local record; the opinion did not impose a new preclearance regime on Texas generally or decide the legality of every mixed district and at-large municipal system.

After the judgment, Pasadena restored the eight-district map for the remainder of the decade and agreed to seek federal preclearance before making further election changes through June 30, 2023.

National Litigation Leadership

Perales joined MALDEF in 1996 and became national litigation director in 2011. She now serves as vice president of litigation, supervising MALDEF’s national legal staff and docket while continuing to litigate voting-rights, immigrant-rights, and redistricting matters.

Her work includes Supreme Court advocacy, federal appeals, congressional testimony on voting discrimination and enforcement, and continuing litigation concerning DACA. The docket brings together trial lawyers, appellate lawyers, local counsel, clients, and community organizations around records of political participation and representation.