Supreme Court gerrymandering ruling
The Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday to uphold most of the Texas congressional redistricting plan gives state legislatures the green light to redraw political maps whenever they want to give the dominant party an edge in U.S. House elections.In a heavily fractured ruling, seven justices decided that the Texas Legislature did not run afoul of the Constitution when the lawmakers redrew U.S. House district lines in 2003, two years after a court had made up its own map. The justices concluded that the mid-decade redistricting plan wasn’t “excessively partisan,” a standard that would have invalidated the map.
The Constitution requires states to redraw congressional district lines every 10 years to reflect the decennial census. The Texas congressional map was redrawn twice after the 2000 census, first in 2001 by a court after state lawmakers couldn’t agree on new boundaries and again in 2003 by the Republican-dominated state Legislature.
The result was that Republican candidates in Texas won six new seats in the 2004 congressional elections, giving the state’s congressional delegation 21 Republicans and 11 Democrats until Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas — who masterminded the strategy — resigned from the House earlier this month.
I am an opponant of Gerrymandering, but I can’t say that the Court was wrong about this decision. The Constitution doesn’t prohibit redrawing the lines, even for partisan purposes.
