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Supreme Court sides with Texas on redistricting plan

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Supreme Court sides with Texas on redistricting plan

Andrew Harrer/BLOOMBERG - The Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.

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The Supreme Court on Friday set aside Texas redistricting plans drawn by a federal court that were favored by minorities and Democrats, and ordered the lower court to come up with new plans based more closely on maps drawn by the Texas legislature.

In an unsigned opinion that drew no dissents, the justices said a federal panel in San Antonio “exceeded its mission” in drawing interim plans for the state’s upcoming primaries. It said the court was wrong to believe its plans needed to be completely independent of the ones passed by the legislature.

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“A district court should take guidance from the state’s recently enacted plan in drafting an interim plan,” the justices wrote. They added, however, that courts must be careful not to incorporate parts of a state’s plan that might violate the Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act.

Because of its population growth over the past decade, Texas was awarded four new congressional districts. Nearly two-thirds of that growth was in the Hispanic community, and Latino groups said the plans approved by Texas’s Republican-dominated legislature and signed by Gov. Rick Perry (R) improperly diluted their power.

The Texas decision was the court’s first involvement in the current round of reapportionment battles, but not its last. Two hours after issuing the ruling, the justices stayed a lower court’s decision that struck down West Virginia’s plan drawing new districts for the state’s three members of Congress.

On the national political landscape, the maps are important because some analysts believe they could play a role in deciding which party controls the House of Representatives.

They said the congressional plan drawn by the legislature could result in Republicans claiming three those new districts. The plan written by the three-judge panel in San Antonio could result in just the opposite results, the analysts said.

The Supreme Court’s mission was complicated by the fact that the Voting Rights Act had meant Texas’s redistricting was being considered in two courts with different objectives.

Because of past discrimination against minorities, Texas is one of the states covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. That means its electoral laws cannot take effect until they are “pre-cleared” — approved by the Justice Department or a panel of federal judges in Washington.

Texas chose to go the judicial route, and a three-judge panel in Washington this week held a trial to consider the Section 5 challenges. It is not expected to rule until next month.

Until that is settled, the San Antonio judges were charged with drawing an interim map, so that Texas’s elections could proceed. The current plan cannot be used because the population growth means it would violate “one-man, one-vote” standards.

Texas already has delayed its primaries, which are among the earliest in the nation, because of the dispute. The state says it needs a new plan by Feb. 1 in order to hold primary elections on its new date of April 3.

Texas last month asked the Supreme Court to keep the judicial plan from being used even on an interim basis, and that was the request granted Friday.

The court’s order noted the difficulties facing the San Antonio judges. The plan passed by the legislature cannot be used, the justices agreed, because it has not been pre-cleared.

“But that does not mean that the plan is of no account or that the policy judgments it reflects can be disregarded by a district court drawing an interim plan,” the justices wrote. “On the contrary, the state plan serves as a starting point for the district court.”

The court was especially critical of the San Antonio judges for drawing a congressional district that appeared to be a “minority coalition” district. The justices said it was unclear whether the San Antonio judges intentionally drew a district in which they expected two different minority groups to band together to form a majority.

But, “if the district court did set out to create a minority coalition district, rather than drawing a district that simply reflected population growth, it had no basis for doing so,” the order said.

The court’s ruling seem to disregard the advice of the Obama administration. Even though it said there were problems with the court-drawn plan, it said it was better to use it on an interim basis.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote separately to say that he believed Section 5’s pre-clearance is unconstitutional. No other justice joined him, although the ruling did note that the court in a 2009 case from Texas said Section 5 raised “serious constitutional questions” because of its intrusion on state sovereignty.”

The challenges to the plan are collectively known as Perry v. Perez.

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