JUSTICES WEIGH TEXAS VOTE LINES - HIGH COURT PONDERS PROPRIETY OF REDISTRICTING THAT BOOSTED GOP

Paper: Charlotte Observer, The (NC)

Date: March 2, 2006

A key Supreme Court justice said Wednesday that Texas Republicans appeared to hurt minority voters when they redrew congressional boundaries that helped the GOP entrench its power in Congress.

But despite Justice Anthony Kennedy's misgivings, it did not appear there was broad support on the high court to throw out the entire map promoted by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas to help Republicans win six more seats.

Justices also did not seem ready to bar states from drawing their boundaries more than once a decade.

The court took up four appeals that raised complicated questions about voter rights under the Constitution as well as federal election law.

"The fate of who controls the House of Representatives could lie with this decision," said Nathaniel Persily, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

A ruling is expected before July.

Texas Republicans shifted congressional district boundaries enough in 2003 that 8 million people - including large blocks of Hispanics - were placed in new districts, represented by different U.S. House members, justices were told.

Kennedy, a centrist and potential swing voter, focused on how the shift affected Hispanics in south Texas. "It seems to me that is an affront and an insult," he said.

The Texas boundaries were changed in 2003 after Republicans took control of both houses of the state Legislature. DeLay had helped GOP legislative candidates in 2002, and was a key player in getting the new map that benefited him and other Republican incumbents.

He has since given up his leadership post after he was charged in state court with money laundering in connection with fundraising for legislative candidates.

Justices did not mention DeLay, and he was not in the crowded courtroom.

Afterward, Ted Cruz, the Texas solicitor general, repeated his courtroom arguments that Republicans were only replacing boundaries that had been drawn to benefit Democrats and that did not reflect the Republican-leaning state. "This map on any measure of fairness accurately reflects the way Texans are voting at the polls right now," he said.

The Supreme Court had put the Texas cases on the fast track, scheduling an unusually long two-hour afternoon session.

The subject matter was extremely technical, and near the end of the argument Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dozed in her chair. Justices David Souter and Samuel Alito, who flank the 72-year-old, looked at her but did not give her a nudge.

"The only reason it was considered, let alone passed, was to help one political party get more seats than another," the justices were told by Paul Smith, a Washington lawyer representing groups challenging the plan.

Chief Justice John Roberts also aggressively challenged critics of the boundaries to explain what was wrong with Republican lawmakers drawing districts that benefit Republicans.

Texans vote in the primaries next week. If the justices rule the map unconstitutional, they could throw out the map and force new primaries.

Author: GINA HOLLAND, ASSOCIATED PRESS -AP WRITERS SUZANNE GAMBOA AND ELIZABETH WHITE CONTRIBUTED.

Section: MAIN

Page: 5A

Dateline: WASHINGTON