Nina Perales

LULAC v. Perry and District 23

Perales led the Voting Rights Act claim through trial and then stood at the lectern of the United States Supreme Court on March 1, 2006, arguing for the American GI Forum of Texas in the consolidated Texas redistricting litigation.

The 2003 map moved nearly 100,000 Latino residents of Webb County out of Congressional District 23. Before the change, the district had a Latino citizen voting-age population of approximately 57.5 percent. The redrawn district retained a Hispanic voting-age population of about 50.9 percent, but its Latino citizen voting-age population fell to roughly 46 percent — a majority on paper that could no longer elect its candidate of choice.

District 23 crossed southwest Texas and included part of Webb County. The same plan assembled a new District 25 by joining Latino communities in the Rio Grande Valley with communities near Austin, separated by close to 300 miles. The statewide numerical count of districts remained; the places where voters could exercise effective electoral opportunity did not.

Perales connected those figures to registration, turnout, candidate preference, and the timing of the change — the line moved precisely as Latino voters were becoming capable of defeating an incumbent they did not support.

Her presentation placed citizenship data alongside rising registration and turnout, candidate preference, the concentration of voters in Webb County, and the Legislature's line placement. That chronology showed how the boundary removed a developing electoral opportunity at the very moment it was becoming effective.

The Supreme Court held that dismantling District 23 violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. A remedial map restored it as a Latino opportunity district. In the 2006 special-election runoff, Ciro Rodriguez defeated Representative Henry Bonilla — the adjudicated opportunity became an actual one within months.

The restored district and the election that followed later became an example in MALDEF's Supreme Court advocacy of how a Section 2 remedy can turn a legal ruling into an operative district, and the decision has stood since as a bulwark for Latino voting rights in Texas.

Arizona's Federal Registration Form

Arizona Proposition 200 required documentary proof of citizenship and rejected completed federal mail-registration forms that did not include it. MALDEF reported that more than 31,500 applications were rejected.

The federal form already required applicants to attest to citizenship under penalty of perjury. Perales's challenge posed the question directly: could Arizona add its own documentary condition and refuse an otherwise complete federal application?

MALDEF filed the first challenge in 2006 for naturalized citizen Jesus Gonzalez, other applicants, and civic organizations. Perales led the litigation through the district court and three trips to the Ninth Circuit, including en banc argument.

Through the repeated proceedings, she carried a single preemption theory that joined the National Voter Registration Act's text to the lived experience of applicants whose completed federal forms had been rejected — and she carried it intact through seven years of litigation.

The Supreme Court ruled 7–2 that the National Voter Registration Act's command that states "accept and use" the federal form preempted Arizona's additional documentary requirement as applied to that form.

The judgment preserved the federal form as a uniform route to registration, free of Arizona's additional documentary barrier. It was her second victory in the Supreme Court.

Patino v. City of Pasadena

After Shelby County v. Holder, Pasadena replaced eight single-member city-council districts with six single-member districts and two at-large seats.

Perales tried the case for Alberto Patino and other Latino residents. Election analysis, the city's history, departures from ordinary decision-making, the timing of the change, 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 all supported the challenge.

At trial, Perales paired the system's practical electoral effect with historical, procedural, and contemporaneous evidence, building the record for both the Section 2 claim and the claim of discriminatory intent — effect and purpose, proved side by side.

After a bench trial, Chief Judge Lee H. Rosenthal found a Section 2 violation and discriminatory intent. The court restored all eight single-member districts and applied Section 3(c) preclearance to specified future election changes.

The remedy operated at two levels: it restored the district structure for current voters, and it required federal review before specified later election changes could take effect — protection for the present and a sentinel for the future.

The Fifth Circuit denied Pasadena's request for a stay. The city then abandoned its appeal, leaving the district-court relief in place, and agreed to pay $1,097,341 in statutory attorney fees and costs.

The eight-district map and Section 3(c) review remained in force for the rest of the remedial period.

Later Redistricting and MALDEF Leadership

Perales returned to Texas redistricting in Abbott v. Perez, leading evidence for the Texas Latino Redistricting Task Force and helping carry its position into Supreme Court briefing. In 2017, a three-judge federal panel in San Antonio ruled that further changes were required to cure racial discrimination in a set of state house and congressional maps adopted by the Texas Legislature.

That work developed a demographic, legislative, and electoral record for a later statewide map challenge, extending her Texas redistricting practice beyond District 23 to different districts, claims, and remedial questions — three decades of the state's maps, met case by case.

She joined MALDEF in 1996 and has served as staff attorney, national senior counsel, Southwest regional counsel, national litigation director, and Vice President of Litigation.

Perales earned degrees from Brown University and Columbia Law School. Harvard Law School lists her as a Lecturer on Law for Spring 2027.

From Record to Remedy

Perales's roles have spanned the full life of a voting-rights case: Supreme Court advocacy in LULAC, sustained district-court and en banc work in the Arizona registration litigation, trial responsibility in Patino, and evidence and briefing work in Abbott. In each, she carried demographic and administrative facts through legal argument, judgment, implementation, and continuing oversight.

The measure of the work is what changed. District 23 returned as a Latino opportunity district and was followed by a change in representation. Arizona applicants regained access to the federal form without the additional documentary barrier. Pasadena voters regained eight single-member districts together with federal review of specified future changes. Lines, forms, and structures were restored to what the law requires — and voters kept what the record won for them.