Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Texas Redistricting Case

The Supreme Court today declined to review a lower court ruling that allowed a controversial redistricting plan in Texas, effectively handing Republicans a victory.

In December last year, the Justice Department approved the redistricting plan, ruling that it did not violate the Voting Rights Act and could be used in the November 2004 elections.

At the time of that decision, one Texas Democrat whose House seat was targeted by the redistricting, Rep. Martin Frost, called the GOP map "the single greatest setback for minority voting rights" in the history of the Voting Rights Act. "It would have been laughed out of any other Justice Department -- Republican or Democratic."

A three-judge federal panel ended up drawing what it called politically neutral district boundaries to govern the 2002 congressional elections. Those elections produced a delegation made up of 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans, but one of the Democrats later switched parties.

Meanwhile, Republicans gained control over both houses of the Texas state legislature, which then decided to revisit the redistricting issue in 2003. Democratic members of the state House managed to block the drawing of a new congressional map for a time by leaving the state, denying the body a quorum.

The Republicans eventually prevailed in a special House session, but Democrats in the state Senate were still able to block redistricting because of a rule requiring approval by a two-thirds vote. Texas's Republican lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst, subsequently suspended the two-thirds rule, and the redistricting was approved last October.

In January, the special panel of three federal judges rejected a Democratic challenge to the plan. The Democrats had argued that Texas could not "redistrict in mid-decade" after boundaries had already been drawn, that the GOP plan unconstitutionally discriminated on the basis of race, that it was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander and that it violated the Voting Rights Act.

The panel stressed that it was deciding "only the legality" of the redistricting plan, "not its wisdom."

"Whether the Texas legislature has acted in the best interest of Texas is a judgment that belongs to the people who elected the officials whose act is challenged in this case," the panel said in a written decision. "We know it is rough and tumble politics, and we are ever mindful that the judiciary must call the fouls without participating in the game. We must nonetheless express concern that in the age of technology, this is a very different game."