Courts must redraw maps
GOP claims victory in Texas case
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court handed Texas Republicans a partial victory Friday, tossing a court- drawn electoral redistricting plan that favored minorities and Democrats but leaving the future of the state’s political maps — and possibly control of the U.S. House — in the hands of two federal courts with Texas’ April primaries looming.
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ordered a three -judge court in San Antonio to craft a new map that pays more deference to one originally drawn up by Texas’ Gop-led Legislature. The immediate effect was to scrap the interim map the San Antonio court drafted that would have favored Democrats to pick up four new congressional seats that Texas will add in 2012.
Republicans, led by Texas Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott, heralded the ruling as a clear victory for the state.
“The Court made clear in a strongly worded opinion that the district court must give deference to elected leaders of this state, and it’s clear by the Supreme Court ruling that the district court abandoned these guiding principles,” he said in statement.
But the Supreme Court didn’t go as far as Texas wanted, which was to implement the maps the Legislature drew for this year’s election. Doing so would have rewritten existing election law as well as the Voting Rights Act. Only Justice Clarence Thomas said he would have gone that far.
Still, the outcome appeared to favor Republicans by instructing the judges to stick more closely to what the Legislature did, said election law expert Richard Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, law school.
After the 2012 election, Texas will have 36 seats in the next Congress, a gain of four seats. Under the map initially drawn by the San Antonio court and thrown out on Friday, Democrats would have been favored in three or four new seats. The GOP holds 23 of the current 32 seats.
In its decision, the Supreme Court said the San Antonio judges particularly erred in altering the borders of legislative and congressional districts in areas of the state where the allegation that the Legislature’s map discriminated doesn’t apply.
Although Republicans were quick to say Friday’s decision will benefit them, Democrats and minority groups said that’s not so.
Jose Garza, who argued on behalf of minority groups and Texas Democrats at the Supreme Court, said Abbott, the Texas attorney general, is “celebrating too early.” Garza said he expects the new maps drawn by the San Antonio court to look very similar to the ones rejected Friday.