Most Texas districts survive challenge
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 court’s 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.
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.
“We hope to get this case back before the U.S. Supreme Court next term, in time for fair districts for 2020,” said Allison Riggs, senior voting rights attorney for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.
When it comes to creating products for same-sex weddings, the Supreme Court reasoned Monday that what’s good for the baker is good for the florist.
After ruling that a Colorado baker was treated unfairly for refusing on religious grounds to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, the justices said a Washington state florist deserves another chance to challenge lower-court rulings against her after she wouldn’t provide services for the marriage of two men because of her religious objection.
Rather than agree to hear the case of Arlene’s Flowers next term or deny its owner’s appeal outright, the high court sent the case back to Washington’s Supreme Court to determine whether Barronelle Stutzman was treated fairly by state courts.
That leaves unresolved the central dispute between proponents of gay rights and religious objectors: whether anti-bias laws in 22 states can require creative artists to serve same-sex weddings against their beliefs.