U.S. Supreme Court upholds most Texas election districts

WASHINGTON – A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Monday that Texas did not draw most congressional and state legislative election districts based on racial demographics.

The 5-4 ruling by the court’s conservative justices said only one state House district was designed by using race impermissibly. It upheld the Republican-controlled state legislature’s maps, based largely on a federal court’s 2013 requirement, for all others.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the decision, asserting that “the good faith of the legislature must be presumed.”

“It was the challengers’ burden to show that the 2013 legislature acted with discriminatory intent when it enacted plans that the court itself had produced,” Alito said.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, joined by the other three liberal justices.

“After years of litigation and undeniable proof of intentional discrimination, minority voters in Texas — despite constituting a majority of the population within the state — will continue to be underrepresented in the political process,” Sotomayor said.

The court already had punted on two more significant cases this month that challenged the way legislatures in Wisconsin and Maryland drew districts. Then on Monday, the justices sent a similar North Carolina challenge back to a federal district court for further review, refusing again to decide whether state legislatures can draw election maps for partisan gain.

The challenge was to North Carolina’s 13 congressional districts – 10 of which were drawn to favor Republicans despite relative parity statewide between the GOP and Democrats.

The action was based on procedural flaws the justices found in a similar case from Wisconsin last week. But unlike that case, challengers in North Carolina appear to meet the high court’s procedural hurdles, such as having a plaintiff in every challenged district.

At stake in many states are state legislative districts as well as those for Congress. The statehouse challenges are particularly important because the lawmakers elected in 2020 will get to draw lines for the next decade.