[PAA-Discuss] High Court May Take Up Texas Redistricting, Travis County, Texas, et al. v. Rick Perry

[S Gonzales]

--- TOM BLACKWELL <decision at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

>
http://biz.yahoo.com/law/051027/96f9a37cc41e22b6ad27d7cd24635ed6.html?.v=1
> 
> It is widely agreed that Republican Rep. Tom DeLay
> plays politics the way Ty
> Cobb ran the base paths -- spikes up. How lawful
> that style is depends on who is
> answering the question. The Supreme Court may soon
> be weighing in on DeLay's
> conduct if it agrees to hear arguments on his
> orchestrated reshaping of federal
> representation for his home state of Texas.
> 
> The Supreme Court will consider Travis County,
> Texas, et al. v. Rick Perry,
> Governor of Texas, et al., along with several other
> related Texas redistricting
> cases, during its private conference on Friday. They
> are among dozens of cases
> the Court will review at the conference to determine
> if they should be added to
> the Court's docket for argument.
> 
> In October 2004 the Supreme Court remanded the Texas
> redistricting case back to
> a three-judge federal panel, which then rejected,
> for a second time, legal
> challenges to the new Texas congressional map,
> passed in 2003 and followed in
> the 2004 election.
> 
> The appellants, which include elected officials and
> special interest groups, are
> asking the Court to throw out the new map in favor
> of one drawn shortly after
> the 2000 census. They also want the Court to
> explicitly define what constitutes
> partisan gerrymandering -- an act the Court last
> year deemed unconstitutional.
> If the Court agrees to hear the case, opening
> arguments could begin next spring.
> 
> In 2002, Republicans, who already had control of the
> governor's office and the
> state Senate, gained the majority in the Texas
> House. At that point, DeLay --
> using his prominence as House majority leader --
> started pushing a redistricting
> plan that would ensure Republicans could hold onto
> and gain federal
> congressional districts.
> 
> Seven plaintiffs sued to stop the plan, claiming the
> redistricting effort was
> illegal; that the data used from the 2000 census was
> out of date; that minority
> districts were overpopulated, violating the
> principle of one person, one vote;
> and that the new districts impeded Democrats'
> ability to mount a reasonable
> challenge. After their case was thrown out by the
> District Court, they appealed
> to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The
> appellants include Texas Reps.
> Sheila Jackson Lee and Eddie Bernice Johnson, the
> Texas Democratic Party and the
> League of United Latin American Citizens.
> 
> "We need the Court to step in and say how often this
> can be done," says Dallas
> lawyer Rolando Rios, who represents LULAC. "Are we
> going to allow redistricting
> every year? There has to be a standard."
> 
> Supporters of the redistricting claim that after
> decades of Democrat-controlled
> gerrymandering, Republicans simply evened the score.
> 
> In June a three-judge panel unanimously rejected the
> appellants' claims, ruling
> the partisan gerrymandering did not rise to a level
> it could deem
> unconstitutional. Judge John Ward, in a separate,
> concurring opinion, expressed
> concern that the map possibly violated the 14th
> Amendment's equal protection
> clause, but that there is currently no
> constitutional test for excessive
> partisanship.
> 
> In making his point, Ward cited Vieth v. Jubelirer,
> a Pennsylvania
> gerrymandering case the Supreme Court decided in
> 2004. The 5-4 decision said
> that partisan gerrymandering should be illegal, but
> the Court did not define
> what constitutes legal redistricting.
> 
> The appeals panel split on whether a state can
> redraw district boundaries when a
> plan already exists.
> 
> Loyola Law School professor Rick Hasen, an election
> law expert, says the Court's
> failure to agree on a judicial test for
> gerrymandering and the question of
> redistricting mid-decade may be reason enough for
> the Court to hear the Texas
> case. The swing vote on the Pennsylvania case was
> Justice Anthony Kennedy, who
> agreed gerrymandering violates the Constitution but
> was not prepared to author a
> test.
> 
> "Kennedy said he wanted to keep the issue open for
> another day," says Hasen. But
> he also warns that the Court's liberal camp may be
> wary of using the Texas case
> to write a test to distinguish redistricting from
> gerrymandering. "In terms of
> the unfair partisan gerrymandering, the facts are
> not as extreme as they were in
> Pennsylvania."
> 
> 
> 
> --
>           Regards, TOM BLACKWELL, PO Box 25403,
> Dallas, Texas 75225
>                   
> http://pages.sbcglobal.net/tom.blackwell/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 


Sarah Gonzales
--------------------------------------------------------
Precinct Chair #395 - Democracy NOW! Use it or lose it
Farenheit 911: The temperature at which regimes change.


		
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