SUPREME COURT Agrees to Review Texas Redistricting

[kpete]

Court Agrees to Review Texas Redistricting By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer
2 minutes ago



WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court said Monday it would consider the constitutionality of a Texas congressional map engineered by Rep. Tom DeLay that helped Republicans gain seats in Congress.

The 2003 boundaries helped Republicans win 21 of the state's 32 seats in Congress in the last election_ up from 15. They were approved amid a nasty battle between Republican leaders and Democrats and minority groups in Texas.

The contentiousness also reached Washington, where the Justice Department approved the plan although staff lawyers concluded that it diluted minority voting rights. Because of historic discrimination against minority voters, Texas is required to get Justice Department approval for any voting changes to ensure they don't undercut minority voting.

Justices will consider a constitutional challenge to the boundaries filed by various opponents. The court will hear two hours of arguments, likely in April, in four separate appeals.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051212/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_texas_redistricting

[hang a left]

1. You should post this in LBN

We are probably screwed anyhow, but, it is late breaking.

[Norquist Nemesis]

2. Given the current court

and the possibility of a delay (maybe that should be DeLay LOL!) until Alito or another of the same ideology are on the SC, I can't tell if this will be good.

Too many questions bouncing around with this one, primarily...What if it's found unconstitutional? Then what?

[MrMonk]

12. A common sense solution

would be that, if the current redistricting is found to be unconstitutional, the 2004 results would stand, but the old district lines would be used for 2006. There probably are precedents for this type of problem, since there have been past SCOTUS cases where the districting processes were held to be unconstitutional.

[ananda]

17. Dems should filibuster Alito and..

.. let Frist use the nucular option..

and then all walk out of the Senate and shut down the
damm government.

[unblock]

3. oh. thank godness. we're all saved now.

:sarcasm:

4-4 in favor of preserving the banana republican advantage, 5-4 if rehnquist is replaced before they hand down their decision. why even bother hearing the case when we already know the outcome?

[acmavm]

4. And what are the odds that the SCOTUS will do the right thing? I say

slim to none.

[napi21]

5. Does anyone know what argument DeLay used to support

the redistricting change?

I can think of one strong reason to NEVER change the districts between a census count. I don't think either Party should be able to do it! So what excuses do they use to push this crap through?

[Kagemusha]

6. Yeah... "We need to elect more Republicans."

That's what the People want and that's what the People are going to get, and just not right that it's such a Republican state with so few Republicans in Congress.

[Melissa G]

19. The excuse was that the lege did not actually redo it when they were

supposed to. The real reason they did not do it was because the did not have the repub majority they were angling for to set up the gerrymandered districts in the first place. Because of the current Delay /Texas Assc of Business scam which they were obviously planning for the next election which then gave them the majority they were waiting for, at the correct 2000 census time the weasels let the redistricting go to the courts.

That court ordered map should have stood for 10 years until 2010 when Texas would be very much a minority dominant state. (READ minorities are smart and generally support DEMs over Repubs. We are actually already there I think as of this year).

The Repubs used the sorry argument that the courts decided ( because the weasels abdicated) and it was better for the lege to do it( now that repubs were in control and could get the outcome they wanted)

[Catherine Vincent]

7. That's good they agreed to review but I think we all know what the

majority will decide...that Delay's redistricting was legitimate because republicans weren't the ones that lost districts.

[applegrove]

8. Excellent!

[Viva_La_Revolution]

9. But..but...but..

"The contentiousness also reached Washington, where the Justice Department approved the plan although staff lawyers concluded that it diluted minority voting rights. Because of historic discrimination against minority voters, Texas is required to get Justice Department approval for any voting changes to ensure they don't undercut minority voting."

So. The Justice Dept. is supposed to make sure it doesn't undercut minority votes. But it does. They screwed up, they need to put it back the way they found it and leave the store. Why does this have to go all the way to the Supreme court?

[Ilsa]

10. My SO just called me to tell me this. Said the Houston Chronicle

has Tom DeLay's name all over it. No matter how it turns out, it will have him twisting in the wind for a while longer, I think.

[napi21]

11. There was a very interesting article in the NYT about redistricting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/magazine/23idea.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5090&en=6f3140a38585415a&ex=1287720000&adxnnl=0&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1134401531-mNTHPlcOAzKBMp2BF5dhOg

It covers most of the theories on redistricting, but the last paragraph pretty much says it all.

When I visited Berkeley, Karin Mac Donald had just returned from giving a talk on redistricting, this one to the League of Women Voters, which considers Proposition 77 flawed because the panel of retired judges would be too small to reflect the state's diversity. One lesson that she has taken from the lecture circuit is that many Americans, no matter how much they complain about the poison of partisanship, are comfortable with their like-minded communities. "People always say it would be great to have competitive districts," Mac Donald explained. "But you talk to them for two minutes about what that would mean, and in the end they say, 'I don't want to live in a competitive district, but everyone else should."' Why, I asked? "Because in a competitive district they might not get what they want."

[kpete]

13. From CNN

Supreme Court to review Texas political map

Monday, December 12, 2005; Posted: 11:04 a.m. EST (16:04 GMT)


The justices will likely hear arguments in April.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court said Monday it would consider the constitutionality of a Texas congressional map engineered by Rep. Tom DeLay that helped Republicans gain seats in Congress.

The 2003 boundaries helped Republicans win 21 of the state's 32 seats in Congress in the last election-- up from 15. They were approved amid a nasty battle between Republican leaders and Democrats and minority groups in Texas.

The contentiousness also reached Washington, where the Justice Department approved the plan, although staff lawyers concluded that it diluted minority voting rights. Because of historic discrimination against minority voters, Texas is required to get Justice Department approval for any voting changes to ensure they don't undercut minority voting.

Justices will consider a constitutional challenge to the boundaries filed by various opponents. The court will hear two hours of arguments, likely in April, in four separate appeals.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/12/scotus.texas.ap/index.html

[kpete]

14. how will the SCOTUS look upon an effort funded by illegal means?

Since it was revealed that the Bush political appointees at both the Ashcroft and Abu Gonzales Justice Departments were ignoring the written opinions of the career staff at the Civil Rights Division, which concluded that DeLay’s efforts violated the 1965 Civil Rights Act, and instead issued an stamp of approval to DeLay, Gonzales has now ordered the staff to no longer issue such opinions. Gonzales says with a straight face that Justice will no longer politicize decisions within the Department, which in fact is what Gonzales and his hacks are doing when they eliminate dissent from staff more qualified to issue opinions than him. But now that the SCOTUS has decided to hear the case for its final decision, there are several questions that need to be answered.

First, as I said we now know that the dissenting written opinion from the career staff in the Civil Rights Division was withheld from the appeals court by the Justice Department. Will this opinion be considered now by the Supreme Court, and if not, why not?

Second, given the fact that Alberto Gonzales, Karl Rove, and Tom DeLay have crossed paths many times over the last decade or so, why should the Supreme Court accept anything at all from the political appointees of the Gonzales Justice Department on this case?

Last, how will the SCOTUS look upon an effort that may have been funded by illegal means that have since landed DeLay an indictment?
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/

[Czolgosz]

15. Yee haw!

[ananda]

16. Whoa! Too bad it's..

.. so damm late.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

18. Very Good News. I'm not overly hopeful but stranger things have happened!

[kpete]

20. Great analysis at The Stakeholder

The Stakeholder
Everybody's guessing at this point, but the fact that they agreed to hear arguments on all three of these things seems rather hopeful to me:


the Voting Rights Act's prohibition of racial discrimination;


the constitutionality of a second redistricting within the 10-year census cycle;


and whether the district lines constitute an impermissible partisan gerrymander.

Lots more
http://www.dccc.org/stakeholder/

[DaveColorado]

21. The outcome is already decided

[kpete]

22. Update

The justices are to hear arguments on March 1 and issue a decision before they adjourn for the summer, just before the 2006 Congressional election campaigns begin in earnest. How the court's decision will affect the Texas races is likely to be a subject of conjecture for many months.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/politics/12cnd-scotus.html?hp&ex=1134450000&en=ae13492bc1263d21&ei=5094&partner=homepage