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December 12, 2005 09:00 AM UTC

Supreme Court Looks at Texas Redistricting

  • 17 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

This story is worth keeping an eye on for any possible precedence that might be set for Colorado. From CNN.com:

The Supreme Court said Monday it would consider the constitutionality of a Texas congressional map engineered by Rep. Tom DeLay that helped Republicans gain seats in Congress.

The 2003 boundaries helped Republicans win 21 of the state’s 32 seats in Congress in the last election– up from 15. They were approved amid a nasty battle between Republican leaders and Democrats and minority groups in Texas.

The contentiousness also reached Washington, where the Justice Department approved the plan, although staff lawyers concluded that it diluted minority voting rights. Because of historic discrimination against minority voters, Texas is required to get Justice Department approval for any voting changes to ensure they don’t undercut minority voting.

Justices will consider a constitutional challenge to the boundaries filed by various opponents. The court will hear two hours of arguments, likely in April, in four separate appeals.

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17 thoughts on “Supreme Court Looks at Texas Redistricting”

  1. The story is a bit less bland than CNN stated; the DoJ staffers were unanimous in their 8-person ruling that the Redistricting plan failed each and every test that the Supreme Court had previously listed for civil rights determinations.  And the DoJ hid the memo from the plaintiffs during discovery and AFAIK, until after the 5th Circuit ruling in the GOP’s favor.

    I don’t know why the SCOTUS would have taken the case except to hear the arguments surrounding the buried memo, unless it is to resolve the question of out-of-turn redistricting which the court left mostly unresolved after hearing the Colorado case (they deferred to our State Constitutional wording instead of answering the question of whether it was legitimate to redistrict out-of-turn).

    In any case, I don’t think the Texas case will affect Colorado in any way; our case has already been settled.

  3. Actually it does have Colorado connections. At the time that Texas did their re-redistricting, the same thing was attempted in Colorado. The Colorado versionwas declared unconstitutional, but the Texas version was allowed to stand. If the Supremes uphold the Texas case, it could open the door for future “midnight gerrymander” attempts here as well.

  4. Actually, no.  The Colorado case was decided under state constitutional provisions.  The US Supreme Court decision wouldn’t impact that.  I also don’t think the US Supreme Court ever heard arguments in the Colorado case.

    http://politicalwire.com/archives/2003/12/01/colorado_redistricting_ruled_unconstitutional.html

    There was an Article III question regarding the power of the Colorado Court to “usurp” the Legislature in this matter (similar to that raised in Bush v. Gore), but that probably isn’t implicated in this suit.

  5. This case is important, though not so much for Colorado due to our Constitution.  Two issues may be placed before the court when arguments are heard:

    1) Can a State redistrict more than once a census period?

    2) Do DoJ political hacks have the standing to ignore civil rights issues when issuing their approval for redistricting proposals, and can they suppress evidence before a court proceeding if it does not support their decision?

  6. It is unlikely to consider (1).  Mid-decade redistrictings were actually fairly common during the first half of our country’s history.  They went out of fashion not because once-a-decade redistrictings came into fashion, but because states stopped redistricting altogether (NH didn’t redistrict from 1872-1966, Illinois went from 1902-46, SC from 1932-6).  Once-a-decade redistricting is actually of a fairly recent genesis.

  8. Agreed on that, pacified.  The map we wound up with was designed to be representative of the State, and I think it does that quite effectively.  It’s one of the fairest in the nation for a politically-influenced map.

  9. Sure its fair… As long as you ignore the fact that more people actually voted for GOP candidates than DEMs in 2004, yet DEMs won the seats needed to get a majority. So long as you ignore that little tidbit, it is a very fair plan.

  10. Iron Mike,

    I was referring to the Congressional Districts, which is what the SCOUTUS is looking at.  No clue about the state house and senate maps.

    You do remember that Al Gore got more votes than Bush, right?  So not like your arguement matters anyway :P.

  11. See, I knew you were Bill Owens…

    You are right about the popular vote not counting, that is kinda the way the Constitution is written and plenty of folks backed away from making that change.

    When it comes to Cong. voting though, no I’m pretty sure the person who gets the most votes is going to win… Every time as a matter of fact.

    Anyhow, I do stand corrected, I did think you and Nancy were talking about the Statehouse votes.

  12. Actually, Iron Mike’s argument about the state legislative districts isn’t the same as the Gore/Bush 2000 argument. Although Democrats may have won more seats altogther, Republicans won the seats in the districts in which more Republicans voted. It seems that Iron Mike would have you believe that because so many people voted Republican in El Paso county, for instance, that the Republicans should have been awarded more seats statewide.

  14. Interesting

    Via Colorado Political News, it appears that the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments on the constituionality (and I’m assuming, the Voting Rights Act implications) of the redistricted Texas House seats.  Keep an eye on this one.  Whi…

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