A federal appeals court has affirmed a lower court ruling against three Latino voters who tried to change how council members are elected in a Dallas suburb.

Farmers Branch has been trying to drive illegal immigrants from the city through a series of ordinances. The voting-rights lawsuit alleged that the city's minority vote was diluted by its at-large City Council system. The plaintiffs wanted to create single-member districts, arguing that Hispanic citizens of voting age would form a majority of the voters registered in one of the proposed districts.

The three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the argument. In a ruling Tuesday, the New Orleans-based panel insisted that the number of minority citizens of voting age in a proposed district must form a majority of the total population of its voting-age citizens.