Small Texas city emerges as new battleground on voting rights

PASADENA, Texas (AP) — When the movie "Urban Cowboy" made this refinery town famous in 1980, the honkytonk Gilley's was booming and wannabe cowpokes from the white Houston suburbs flocked here to drink and dance. Houston was the big city, but Pasadena was for kicks.

Today, Pasadena is a mostly working-class Hispanic suburb that looks as hard-ridden in some pockets as the mechanical bull that bucked John Travolta. Gilley's burned down years ago. Now a federal lawsuit accuses the town's white councilmembers of leading a discriminatory plan to turn back the clock.

Pasadena is preparing to change the makeup of its city council in a way that city fathers hope fosters new development, but that some Hispanics allege dilutes their influence. The case could become a test of the Supreme Court ruling last year that struck down most of the federal Voting Rights Act, giving cities in many Southern states new latitude to change election laws affecting minorities without first getting federal approval.

"Clearly it was racism," said Pasadena Councilman Ornaldo Ybarra, one of two Hispanics on Pasadena's eight-member council, about the town's planned council changes. The campaign for a new voting system "was meant to scare Anglos, and it was effective," he said.

In Pasadena, which is roughly 60 percent Hispanic, voters approved a referendum that replaces two city council seats representing districts with at-large seats, which Hispanic leaders say will negate their growing population numbers. The new format was proposed by the mayor, who is white, in July 2013, one month after the high court decision.