Are white voters in Dallas County being discriminated against?

That question, which might cause some to chuckle, will be answered after a trial starting April 16 that could change the face of the voting rights struggle in America.

Four white residents are suing Dallas County, claiming that the current boundaries of county commissioner districts violate their voting rights. The case is believed to be one of the first in the nation where a group of whites is seeking protection under the Voting Rights Act.

The lawsuit foreshadows a potential turnabout in Texas' and the nation's racial politics. As Hispanics, blacks and other minorities close in on making America a country where minorities make up the majority, some whites are attempting to use civil rights laws to protect themselves from what they see as discrimination.

Redistricting experts say the plaintiffs will have a hard time prevailing over the county. The Voting Rights Act, in part, protects victims of historical and systemic discrimination. White voters don't fall in that class. A challenge to the maps on grounds that the white residents' constitutional rights were violated has already faded.

"That's a pretty high hurdle to overcome," said Michael Li, an election law expert and senior counsel for the Brennan Center's Democracy Program at New York University. "There hasn't been a history of discrimination against white voters in Dallas County."

Senator Dean Heller has been avoiding constituents and his staff tossed out a woman battling Stage 4 cancer when she dared to ask about his stance on the Affordable Care Act, but he sure had a lot to say on the subject at a mysteriously closed-to-the-press luncheon where he was collecting checks and making promises. The Las Vegas Review-Journal was able to get audio of Heller’s speech to the Nevada Republican Men’s Club and his comments were surprising, especially his strategy for winning in November:

“We now have less than 60,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans. Let me be more clear. If we can get that number below 50,000, I can’t lose,” Heller said Tuesday in Las Vegas, according to audio obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “I can’t lose. Because the ratio of voter turnout in a non-presidential year — we’re in a non-presidential year — the tendency of Republicans to vote is higher than the other party.”

A sitting U.S. senator is hoping people don’t participate in democracy. How can you represent a state where you are trying to discourage the majority from turning out for an election? Based on current trends in special elections, Heller’s strategy is going to be a loser. Bigly.

On Monday, Mr. Fontaine filed a defamation lawsuit against Infowars, one of its reporters and its right-wing founder, Alex Jones, asserting that their story misidentified him as the gunman and caused his photo to spread across social media, message boards and other websites. In the lawsuit, a lawyer for Mr. Fontaine said it appeared that Infowars published his photo simply because of his shirt.

“Mr. Jones and Infowars have long been consumed with paranoia over the prospect of communist infiltration and indoctrination,” the lawsuit, filed in Travis County District Court in Austin, Tex., said. “Over the past year alone, Infowars has featured hundreds of sensationalist articles and videos focusing on the threat of communist agitation and conspiracies.”

Mr. Fontaine declined a request for an interview, but his lawyer, Mark D. Bankston, said it was obvious that Mr. Fontaine’s shirt was not to be taken seriously. The shirt, which is called “The Communist Party,” shows Marx, the 19th century economist who wrote “The Communist Manifesto,” wearing a lampshade on his head and Stalin, Lenin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro drinking from red plastic cups.....

On Monday, Mr. Fontaine filed a defamation lawsuit against Infowars, one of its reporters and its right-wing founder, Alex Jones, asserting that their story misidentified him as the gunman and caused his photo to spread across social media, message boards and other websites. In the lawsuit, a lawyer for Mr. Fontaine said it appeared that Infowars published his photo simply because of his shirt.

“Mr. Jones and Infowars have long been consumed with paranoia over the prospect of communist infiltration and indoctrination,” the lawsuit, filed in Travis County District Court in Austin, Tex., said. “Over the past year alone, Infowars has featured hundreds of sensationalist articles and videos focusing on the threat of communist agitation and conspiracies.”

Mr. Fontaine declined a request for an interview, but his lawyer, Mark D. Bankston, said it was obvious that Mr. Fontaine’s shirt was not to be taken seriously. The shirt, which is called “The Communist Party,” shows Marx, the 19th century economist who wrote “The Communist Manifesto,” wearing a lampshade on his head and Stalin, Lenin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro drinking from red plastic cups.

Handing the state another voting rights loss, a federal judge has sided with a civil rights group that claimed Texas violated federal law by failing to register residents to vote when they updated their drivers’ license information online.

In a court order made public on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia of San Antonio ruled that Texas was in violation of the federal National Voter Registration Act. A portion of that law requires states to give residents the opportunity to register to vote at the same time that they apply for or renew their driver’s licenses.

It wasn’t immediately clear how Garcia will direct the state to comply with the law; Garcia indicated he will provide more details in the next two weeks. But the Texas Civil Rights Project, which represents several Texas voters in the case, said the state would “soon be forced” to change its voter registration policies — and possibly introduce its first mechanism for online voter registration.

“For too long, the state of Texas has ignored federal voting rights laws intended to ensure that all eligible voters have an opportunity to register to vote,” said Beth Stevens, voting rights director at the Texas Civil Rights Project. “We look forward to seeing deep changes in [the Texas Department of Public Safety’s] voter registration practices in the coming months, affecting well over a million Texans every year.”