Halt to district redraw fought

Civil rights groups challenge freezing of court-ordered redo.

Tuesday was supposed to be the day a San Antonio-based federal court began redrawing Texas political districts found to discriminate against minority voters.

Instead, two days of hearings were canceled after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito halted matters at the request of Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who argued that the lower court mistakenly ruled that two congressional districts and nine Texas House districts had to be redrawn because they were created to discriminate against Latino and African-American voters.

In their bid to overturn that ruling, Abbott and Paxton also asked the high court to let Texas use the 11 districts, as drawn, in the 2018 primary and general elections, arguing that the lower court waited too long by issuing its decisions in mid-August, creating a risk of voter confusion and delays in next year’s March primaries.

Alito, who is responsible for legal matters arising from Texas, last week temporarily halted action in the case and ordered those challenging the maps to respond to the request from Abbott and Paxton.

Filed Tuesday, that response argued that the Texas officials jumped the gun on their appeal because the lower court hasn’t issued a final order — or decided on new district maps — leaving nothing to appeal.

What’s more, they argued, delaying the case any longer would force “the citizens of Texas to vote yet again in unconstitutional congressional districts.”

“The court should not countenance Texas’ attempts to introduce further delay and multiply the proceedings in this court in an attempt to run out the clock,” said the lawyers, who represent civil rights groups, minority voters and Democratic politicians who challenged the district maps.

The Supreme Court has no deadline to issue its ruling on whether Texas can appeal and, if so, whether to allow current districts to be used in 2018 while that appeal continues.

The outcome of the case could have significant impact on congressional districts in and around Travis County, a Democratic stronghold that was broken into five districts, four represented by Republicans, after the 2010 census.

One new map submitted to the San Antonio court, for example, would divide Travis between two districts — District 25, which would combine the southern half