Court: States Can Redraw Political Map
The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld most of the Republican-boosting Texas congressional map engineered by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay but threw out part, saying some of the new boundaries failed to protect minority voting rights.
The fractured decision was a small victory for Democratic and minority groups who accused Republicans of an unconstitutional power grab in drawing boundaries that booted four Democratic incumbents from office.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said Hispanics do not have a chance to elect a candidate of their choosing under the plan. The vote was 5-4 on that issue.
Republicans picked up six Texas congressional seats two years ago, and the court's ruling does not seriously threaten those gains. Lawmakers, however, will have to adjust boundary lines to address the court's concerns.
At issue was the shifting of 100,000 Hispanics out of a district represented by a Republican incumbent and into a new, oddly shaped district. Foes of the plan had argued that that was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voting rights.Supreme Court Redistricting Ruling
On a different matter, the court ruled 7-2 that state legislators may draw new maps as often as they like, not just once a decade as Texas Democrats claimed. That means Democratic and Republican state lawmakers can push through new maps anytime there is a power shift at a state capital.
The Constitution says states must adjust their congressional district lines every 10 years to account for population shifts. In Texas the boundaries were redrawn twice after the 2000 census, first by a court, then by state lawmakers in a second round promoted by DeLay after Republicans took control.
That was acceptable, the justices said.
"We reject the statewide challenge to Texas redistricting as an unconstitutional political gerrymander," Kennedy wrote.
However, he said the state's redrawing of District 23 violated the Voting Rights Act.
"You can say the Democrats won because any help on political matters from this conservative court has to be considered a surprise. Or you can say the Republicans won because the vast majority of the plan was upheld and certainly the Justices have signaled that similar plans in the future also are likely to be okay," CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen said.
"The big news here is that the Court has said that states can redraw districts more than once a decade, depending upon the local political majority at the time, and that's a new reality that ultimately will cut against either party at one point or another," Cohen added.
The 2003 boundaries were approved by the state Legislature and its Republican majority newly elected with DeLay's help. In the next congressional elections, Republicans picked up six additional seats in the House. The contentious map drawing also contributed to the downfall of DeLay.
He was charged in state court with money laundering in connection with fundraising for legislative candidates. Although he is fighting the charges and maintains he is innocent, DeLay gave up his leadership post and then resigned from Congress.
"Today's ruling by the Supreme Court striking down portions of the gerrymandered Texas congressional map supports what Democrats have long said: Republicans are willing to curtail the rights of minorities for partisan gain," House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.
After Texas decided to redraw its congressional district boundaries, two other states, Colorado and Georgia, also undertook a second round of redistricting.
"Some people are predicting a rash of mid-decade redistricting. I am skeptical," said Richard Hasen, an election law expert at Loyola Law School. "It would be seen as a power grab in a lot of places."
The justices have struggled in the past to define how much politics is acceptable when states draw new boundaries. Two years ago, they split 5-4 in leaving a narrow opening for challenges claiming party politics overly influenced election maps.
The court was also fractured Wednesday with six separate opinions, covering more than 120 pages, on the Texas boundaries.
The court's four most conservative members opposed the part of the decision that found a violation of the Voting Rights Act.
Justice Antonin Scalia complained that the court should have shut the door on claims of political gerrymandering in map drawing.
The Supreme Court handed down two other rulings Wednesday. The Court ruled against two foreign suspects who argued an international treaty required police to inform them that they had a right to contact their governments when they were arrested. By a 6-3 vote, justices did not decide whether a 1969 treaty signed by the U.S. and several other countries requires suspects to be informed of such a right.
And, in another ruling, the Court said that Pennsylvania officials did not violate the free-speech rights of troublesome inmates by keeping secular newspapers and magazines away from them. Justices, by a 6-3 vote, said the state could use newspapers as incentives to get inmates in a high-security unit to behave themselves.