Supreme Court to weigh Texas redistricting

The case is being closely watched because it could set a national standard for redistricting, a standard that could invalidate districts across the country.

Texas Democrats filed seven different appeals to the Supreme Court asking the justices to examine whether gerrymandering by the Texas Republicans was so tainted by partisan considerations that it violated the constitutional guarantee of one person, one vote.

The Supreme Court attempted to address the political gerrymandering issue in April 2004 in a case called Vieth v. Jubelirer. It involved a challenge to a redistricting plan drawn up by Republicans in Pennsylvania.

In that case the justices split 4-4 on whether the courts had authority to second-guess statewide redistricting plans. The court's conservative wing held that lawsuits challenging political gerrymanders were outside the court's power to address because no manageable standards exist to demonstrate when political considerations go too far in the line- drawing process.

The court's liberals disagreed. They said that some standard could be applied, but they could not agree among themselves on what that standard should be.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the key swing vote in the Vieth case, sided with the conservative wing that the challenge to the Pennsylvania gerrymander should be dismissed. But he declined to join the conservative wing in foreclosing any future judicial involvement in policing political gerrymandering.

Now with the acceptance of the Texas case, all eyes are on Justice Kennedy.

"The decision to accept this case suggests that Justice Kennedy may have decided that some partisan gerrymanders go too far," Persily says. "Perhaps he has come up with some administrable standard to say when partisanship becomes too much partisanship."

Shortly after the court announced its ruling in the Pennsylvania case, the justices summarily affirmed the decision of a three-judge panel that had struck down a redistricting plan in Georgia. The panel had ruled that the newly drawn districts designed to favor Democrats violated the principle of one person, one vote.

When the appeal of the Texas case arrived at the Supreme Court, the justices remanded the matter back the three-judge panel in Texas with instructions that they should reexamine their decision upholding the redistricting plan in light of the high court's ruling in the Vieth case. It is unclear why the remand order referred only to the Pennsylvania case without mentioning the Georgia case as well.

Nonetheless, the Texas panel addressed issues raised in both cases and concluded that the 2003 redistricting plan did not violate constitutional safeguards. The court said there was no meaningful way to gauge a constitutional violation.

"We conclude that claims of excessive partisanship before us suffer from a lack of any measure of substantive fairness," wrote Judge Patrick Higginbotham for the three-judge panel.

Page: 1 | 2