In January 2010 Annise Parker became the first openly gay mayor of a large American city upon her inauguration as Houston's mayor. .
. The Hobby Center, The Texas Department of Criminal Justice operates some correctional facilities in Harris County including:, The 2003 Texas redistricting of Congressional districts led by Republican Tom DeLay was called by the New York Times "an extreme case of partisan gerrymandering" a group of Democratic legislators the "Texas Eleven" fled the state in a quorum-busting effort to prevent the legislature from acting but was unsuccessful the state had already redistricted following the 2000 census Despite these efforts the legislature passed a map heavily in favor of Republicans based on 2000 data and ignoring the estimated nearly one million new residents in the state since that date Career attorneys and analysts at the Department of Justice objected to the plan as diluting the votes of African American and Hispanic voters but political appointees overrode them and approved it. Legal challenges to the redistricting reached the national Supreme Court in the case League of United Latin American Citizens v Perry (2006) but the court ruled in favor of the state (and Republicans).
Lynn Alan Palmer, DDS