Justice filing defends Texas remap
Voting rights, minority representation saved, Supreme Court told
08:45 AM CST on Monday, February 6, 2006
By ALLEN PUSEY / The Dallas Morning News
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to ignore arguments by minority voters in Texas that a contentious redistricting by Republican state legislators in 2003 violated the Voting Rights Act.
In a 35-page friend-of-the-court brief filed last week, the U.S. Justice Department argued that minority representation was preserved and even enhanced by the Republican reconfiguration and that Hispanics may be over-represented in some parts of the state.
Democrats and minorities have contested the reconfigured map, thus far unsuccessfully, as an unprecedented power grab by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land. They argue that Republicans misused data from the 2000 census to tailor a mid-decade partisan gerrymandering that maximized Republican voter influence at the expense of incumbent Democrats.
Drawn and redrawn
In a special session scheduled for March 1, the Supreme Court will hear four Texas cases, all challenges to the Republican redistricting plan.
In 2001, the state was awarded two new congressional districts as a result of the 2000 census. Efforts to draw a new map ended up in court when the Legislature deadlocked, and a three-judge federal panel drew new lines in 2001.
In 2003, after Republicans gained control of the Legislature, they sought to redraw the map. Following four bitter legislative sessions and two boycotts by Democrats, a new map was adopted, which the Supreme Court is now reconsidering.
Traditionally, legislatures have redrawn congressional districts each decade, based on the results of the decennial census. Critics argue that the 2003 Texas plan breaks a constitutional threshold for excessive partisan gerrymandering.
In its brief, the Justice Department includes no position on excessive partisanship or various questions about the use of census data. It focuses instead on whether the current Texas districts violate the Voting Rights Act.
Last year, the department acknowledged that senior Justice officials had overruled staff concerns about the legality of the 2003 redistricting.
FW-area seat
The Voting Rights Act questions involve two districts – one in the Fort Worth area and one not drawn at all. Critics argue that the Fort Worth-area district, wholly reconfigured by the Republicans, eliminated a black-and-Hispanic majority district that was, in effect, controlled by black voters. Another suit alleges that an additional Hispanic-controlled congressional district should have been drawn in south and west Texas.
The Justice Department said that the black population in the Fort Worth-area district, about 22 percent, was too small to qualify the district as protected under voting laws; and that challengers had failed to show that Hispanic voters in south and west Texas could have controlled another district had it been drawn.
Gerald Hebert, who represents a group of plaintiffs in one of the cases, said he was not surprised by the Justice Department's narrow filing but is bothered by the position officials have taken.
"What they've done is to reverse several decades of Justice Department policy," Mr. Hebert said. "And I find that really disappointing."
In a 123-page brief, also filed this week, Texas officials argued that the new composition of the state's congressional delegation – 21 Republicans in 32 seats, up from 15 under the old plan – better reflects the state's political demographics.
They argue that the earlier, court-ordered redistricting had frustrated the state's persistent Republican majority, and that questions of political intent, however partisan, has been properly avoided by the courts in favor of state legislatures.
They said the case is "fundamentally about democracy."
E-mail apusey@dallasnews.com