Supreme Court Sides with Texas in Redistricting Case

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Supreme Court of the United States sided with the state of Texas in a redistricting case before the high court on Monday.

According to information from the SCOTUS website, justices voted 5 to 4 to uphold the electoral maps drawn after the 2010 census.  Democrats in the state sued immediately after the maps were approved by the Republican controlled legislature.

Amy Howe writes “The legislature’s federal congressional and state legislative maps never took effect, because a three-judge district court (which normally hears redistricting cases) barred the state from using the maps and created its own plans instead. But the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the court-created maps in 2012, telling the lower court to use the state legislature’s maps as a “starting point” for new maps. The district court did so, and in 2013 the state legislature adopted the maps for permanent use.”

The majority reversed the district court’s holding that three of the districts diluted the votes of minority voters, but it upheld the district court’s ruling that a state legislative district in Tarrant County was the product of racial gerrymandering.  

The Supreme Court found that the evidence was "plainly insufficient" to prove that the 2013 Legislature acted in "bad faith” when it enacted the districts.The one exception was Fort Worth-based House District 90, which is occupied by Democratic state Rep. Ramon Romero and was deemed an impermissible racial gerrymander because lawmakers illegally used race as the predominant factor in deciding its boundaries.

The Supreme Court’s ruling, which keeps all but one of the state's districts in place through the end of the decade, is a major blow to the maps’ challengers — civil rights groups, voters of color and Democratic lawmakers.  

The maps will be used for the midterm elections in 2018 and the general election in 2020.  Maps will then be redrawn following the 2020 census.