Redistrict Fight Will Go Before High Court

[papau]

The Wall Street Journal's Cummings and Bravin predict: "Any decision by the high court is unlikely to affect the midterm elections in Texas, since primaries there are scheduled to take place a week after the March 1 oral arguments on the case."
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"In a surprise move, the high court said it would consider reining in the most extreme forms of partisan gerrymandering. The court previously has rejected such challenges, concluding it is impossible to separate partisan politics from the drawing of electoral districts," – (but Justice Anthony M. Kennedy cast the deciding vote, saying he could have gone the other way if partisan gerrymandering became so extreme as to be unconstitutional because it deprived the minority of fair representation.)


http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-scotus13dec13,1,1845747,full.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage

Redistrict Fight Will Go Before High Court
Critics say Republican remapping in Texas, led by Tom DeLay, diluted minority voters' power.
By David G. Savage Times Staff Writer December 13, 2005

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a constitutional challenge to the hotly disputed Texas redistricting plan engineered by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in 2003 that handed Republicans six additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In a surprise move, the high court said it would consider reining in the most extreme forms of partisan gerrymandering. The court previously has rejected such challenges, concluding it is impossible to separate partisan politics from the drawing of electoral districts.

But the Texas case stands out because Republicans pushed through the redistricting as soon as they gained control of both houses of the state Legislature — just two years after a different redistricting plan based on the latest census, the traditional yardstick, had been approved by the courts.

The challengers call it a purely partisan move that violated the Constitution because it deprived Democrats of a fair and equal chance to elect representatives of their choice. They say the new congressional boundaries were drawn to dilute the voting power of blacks and Latinos.

The justices said they would take up the legal challenge from Democrats and minority voters in the spring and rule by June.<snip>