Court fiddles with Texas redistricting, but leaves it basically in tact

AP/MSNBC:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday threw out part of a Texas congressional map engineered by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, 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 out of 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.

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. Justices had been told that was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voting rights.

...

While the Democrats may claim this as a victory, it is unlikely to change the facts on the ground and it further confirms how unfair their old district boundaries were. Texas has been a Repuiblican state for over a decade and the Democrats' old gerrymander is all that kept many of them in their congressional seats.

Update: This Houston Chronicle story appears to give a fairer version of the court's opinion.

The U.S. Supreme Court today upheld almost all of Texas' Republican-friendly U.S. House election district map.

By a 5-4 vote, the court said the 23rd District in Southwest Texas, represented by Republican Henry Bonilla, violated the Voting Rights Act because its design trampled the rights of some Hispanic voters. Reshaping the district, a task that apparently now is assigned to federal court in Texas, would force a change in at least one other neighboring district.

But the high court ruling preserved the other districts, in the Houston area and elsewhere, that were created by the Texas Legislature in 2003. This includes a Dallas-area district whose constitutionality was challenged by black voters.

The Supreme Court today also upheld the right of states to change their congressional district boundaries more frequently than the traditional every 10 years following each U.S. Census.

The court also said there is "nothing inherently suspect about a legislature's decision to replace mid-decade a court-ordered plan with one of its own."

"Even if there were, the fact of mid-decade redistricting alone is no sure indication of unlawful political gerrymanders," the court said.

...

This looks like a clear loss for the Democrats. The decision on the hispanics does not make that much sense but it does not have that much impact either.