Justices signal support for most redrawn districts
But many seem open to questions that two areas hurt Hispanic voters

Paper: Dallas Morning News, The (TX)

Date: March 2, 2006

WASHINGTON - Texas Democrats took their bitter redistricting struggle to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday with the hope of changing boundaries, crafted by Republicans two years ago, that altered the balance of power in the state's congressional delegation.

During two hours of arguments, the justices appeared cool to the much-anticipated claim that a 2003 map of congressional districts approved by the GOP-dominated Legislature amounted to excessively partisan politics. But a majority seemed open to the possibility that one part of the map - a finger from Central Texas to the Lower Rio Grande Valley - might have disenfranchised Hispanic voters.

"It seems to me that is an affront and an insult," said Justice Anthony Kennedy, considered by many a critical vote on the issues presented Wednesday.

Four Texas cases challenged the legality of the 2003 map, which reconfigured congressional districts drawn by a federal court in 2001. The suits challenged the timing of the redistricting as well as its effect on an estimated 8 million voters - many of them key blocs of blacks and Hispanics - whose districts were changed as a result.

The plan was adopted after the 2002 state elections created a solid Republican majority in both chambers in Austin, where Democrats had previously controlled the House and the Republicans the Senate. It came only after a partisan struggle involving three special legislative sessions, two controversial boycotts by Democrats and a heavy hand by Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land.

The Democrats had hoped to use that contentious history to convince a majority of the justices that the Republican plan - including its unusual mid-decade timing - amounted to unconstitutional political gerrymandering. But having traditionally shied away from the raw politics of redistricting, the court showed few signs Wednesday of changing course.

When Paul M. Smith, representing a group of Democrats, argued that the redistricting plan designed by Republicans was first and foremost intended to dislodge Democratic incumbents, Justice Antonin Scalia retorted sarcastically, "That's a surprise."

And when Mr. Smith argued that the redistricting by the Legislature had overturned a much fairer plan for reasons that were purely political, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she was puzzled. "I thought a plan drafted by the state Legislature replaced a plan that had been drafted by a court?"

Even Justice David Souter seemed impatient with the idea that courts can set limits on the politics of redistricting.

"It is impossible to take partisanship out of a political process," Justice Souter said.

Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz defended the Republican map as the first drawn by elected officials since a highly politicized plan forged by Democrats in 1991. In the 2002 elections, he said, the court-drawn plan had perpetuated an "anti-majoritarian" control of the state's congressional seats, leaving 17 of the state's 32 seats controlled by Democrats in a state that had become overwhelmingly Republican.

"The court-drawn map perpetuated the 1991 Democratic gerrymander," Mr. Cruz said.

The plan before the justices gave Republicans 21 House seats.

The justices also seemed unimpressed by arguments that black Democrats in Fort Worth, who numbered less than 22 percent of the voting population, had been disenfranchised by their consignment to a highly Republican North Texas district.

And when Mr. Cruz enumerated ways in which the Republican plan had been at least as fair to African-Americans as the 1991 map drawn by Democrats, the justices did not challenge him.

The justices were more pointed, however, in their questions concerning efforts to bolster incumbent Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-San Antonio. For Justice Kennedy and a potential majority of the court, the key question was whether a sprawling 300-mile-long district - a narrow band stretching from Austin to McAllen - had been created for Hispanic voters as a cynical and illegal effort to disenfranchise Hispanic Democrats.

The Republican plan removed 100,000 Hispanic voters from District 23, a district in which Mr. Bonilla had never received more than 30 percent of the Latino vote. They were then reallocated to District 25, the newly created Hispanic district.

Nina Perales of the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund argued that Republicans had tried to avoid legal challenges by leaving a bare majority of Hispanics (50.9 percent) in Mr. Bonilla's district, but bolstering his district with a large bloc of Anglo Republicans to ensure his seat.

"They used race to protect an incumbent and give the impression of Latino support," Ms. Perales said.

The charge was of particular interest to Justice Kennedy, who described it at one point as a violation of the law and at several other points "an affront and an insult" to Hispanic voters.

Under questioning by Justice Kennedy, Mr. Cruz admitted that the motives behind the reconfiguration were political and designed to help win approval by the Justice Department, which must clear any controversial redistricting plans. But beyond that, he said, the Republican moves had nothing to do with race.

Justice Kennedy was unmoved, however, asking whether the Legislature had crafted a racially motivated disenfranchisement in one part of the state, attempting to correct it in another - which would be a violation of the law.

"It's a problem for me," he said. "The state creates the very problem it seeks to solve."

E-mail apusey@dallasnews.com and tgillman@dallasnews.com

Author: ALLEN PUSEY and TODD J. GILLMAN

Section: NEWS

Page: 1A

Justices signal support for most redrawn districts But many seem open to questions that two areas hurt Hispanic voters

Justices signal support for most redrawn districts
But many seem open to questions that two areas hurt Hispanic voters