[Mb-civic] High Court Orders Review of Texas Seats

[Michael Butler]

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  High Court Orders Review of Texas Seats
  The Associated Press

  Monday 18 October 2004

  WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court handed Democrats a victory Monday, ordering
a lower court to reconsider a Texas redistricting plan that could give
Republicans six more seats and a firmer hold on their majority in the House.

  The decision won't affect next month's elections, though any GOP gains on
Nov. 2 could be wiped out later if the plan ultimately is deemed
unconstitutional.

   States must redraw boundaries every 10 years to reflect population shifts
found during the census. Five appeals over the Texas boundary-drawing pose
an interesting question: Can political leaders of a Legislature force
district drawing more frequently than once a decade, to make more seats
winnable for members of their party?

   The case has been exceedingly contentious. Democratic legislators twice
staged walkouts from the Texas Legislature to protest district-drawing that
benefited Republican candidates.

   And House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, was admonished recently by
the House ethics committee for getting too involved.

   In a brief order, justices threw out a victory for Texas Republican
legislators, and ordered a three-judge federal panel in Texas to reconsider
the issue.

   "I see this as the Supreme Court punting right before the national
election," said Richard Hasen, an election law expert at Loyola Law School.
"It buys the Supreme Court another term before it has to rethink the issue.
Maybe by then we'll have a new justice or two."

   The Supreme Court has been divided on how much politics should be allowed
in redistricting. In a 5-4 ruling last spring, justices left a narrow
opening for challenges claiming party politics overly influenced election
maps.

   The court said Monday that the Texas map should be viewed again, in light
of that decision.

   Texas lawmakers failed to pass new maps for the state's 32 House seats in
2001, after the census numbers were in, so a federal court drew up a plan.

   Republicans took control of the Legislature after 2002 elections and
started working on another map early in 2003. Democrats in the state House
and Senate staged quorum-breaking walkouts in an attempt to kill GOP-led
bills, but the Republicans ultimately prevailed.

   The Texas delegation is now even at 16-16. But because of the redrawn
districts Republicans could hold up to 22 seats after the election.

   DeLay had pressed state lawmakers to redraw districts. Democrats
complained and the bipartisan House ethics committee determined earlier this
month that DeLay, the No. 2 House Republican, raised "serious concerns" by
contacting the Federal Aviation Administration last year to help locate
Democratic lawmakers who fled to Oklahoma in an effort to thwart passage of
the DeLay-engineered redistricting plan.

   A report from the Transportation Department's inspector general found
that DeLay's request set off a search that spread over eight hours and
involved at least 13 FAA employees.

   Washington attorney Paul M. Smith, one of the attorneys for opponents of
the new map, said in a Supreme Court filing that the Texas experience "is
proof that the redistricting process in this country has gone completely
haywire."

   He said with Texas as the model, states could be forced through painful
district drawing every two years "for any reason, including raw partisan
greed."

   Ted Cruz, Texas' solicitor general, said that the lawmakers were trying
to reverse maps that benefited Democrats. He said the state is solidly
Republican and the new boundaries are not out-of-line.

   The Constitution does not say when line-drawing must be done, but Smith
told justices that voters are guaranteed the right to choose their
representatives through "free and fair elections."

   He said the new plan targeted seven Democratic incumbents, putting them
in districts with another incumbent, adding Republicans to their districts
or giving them hundreds of thousands of new, unfamiliar constituents.

   The three-judge panel that upheld the map in January said that Congress -
not courts - has the power to bar states from redrawing districts over and
over. That panel will reconsider its decision.

   The cases are Jackson v. Perry, 03-1391; American GI Forum of Texas v.
Perry, 03-1396; Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee v. Perry, 03-1399; Travis
County v. Perry, 03-1400; and Henderson v. Perry, 03-9644.

   Also Monday, the Supreme Court declined to reinstate a lawsuit filed by a
former Georgia representative who claimed her loss in the 2002 Democratic
primary resulted from wide-scale Republican crossover voting.

   The court let stand a 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that
threw out Democrat Cynthia McKinney's lawsuit, citing a lack of sufficient
evidence. The ruling said the Democratic Party is free to hold an open
primary.

   The case is Oshburn v. Georgia, 04-217.

  

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