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Federal panel upholds Texas redistricting plan
HoustonChronicle.com reports that a Federal panel has again upheld the Texas redistricting plan:
A three-judge federal panel Thursday upheld the Texas congressional redistricting plan, likely sending the case back to the U.S. Supreme Court for review.
The ruling means the Texas congressional districts used in the 2004 elections will remain in place at least through next year’s elections unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes. Federal courts usually do not halt elections while a redistricting case is being considered.
Texas Republicans had claimed throughout the redistricting battle that they were merely upholding their Constitutional duty that the state come up with a redistricting plan every ten years instead of letting a panel of federal judges do it. After losing that battle, Texas Democrats started claiming that the new districts diluted minority voting strength and were unconscionable gerrymanders.
This claim is what was being reviewed. After losing a 2-1 panel decision they had appealed to the Supreme Court which sent it back for further consideration under Vieth v. Jubelierer which upheld Pennsylvania’s redistricting against claims of gerrymandering. According to the Houston Chronicle, they finally decided that there is no objective standard for determining whether a district has been gerrymandered, stating: “We conclude that claims of excessive partisanship before us suffer from a lack of any measure of substantial fairness.” Although, I guess you could read that sentence to state that the claims of partisanship were themselves unfair.
The panel’s new 2-1 decision came on the question of whether it is permissible for a state to redistrict in the midst of the decade given population shifts. The City of Austin and some law professors said that not taking those shifts into account violates the one-person, one-vote principle developed by Baker v. Carr and its progeny.
However, the panel, by a 2-1 vote, decided that the Constitutional mandate to redistrict exists in a “legal fiction.” Just as a corporation is considered a “legal person” despite the fact that it is not a corporeal entity, the decennial census used to redistrict exists as the official census until the next decennial census is conducted.
This makes perfect sense to me, but look for Texas Democrats to whine about this too.
MickC @ June 10, 2005