High Court Upholds Texas Redistricting Map

JIM LEHRER:

The Supreme Court decision on Texas redistricting. NewsHour regular Marcia Coyle of the National Law Journal is here to explain it all.

Marcia, welcome.

MARCIA COYLE, National Law Journal:

Thanks, Jim.

JIM LEHRER:

First of all, the history of the case and how it got to the Supreme Court.

MARCIA COYLE:

OK. Following the 2000 census, a politically-divided Texas legislature was unable to agree on a redistricting plan, a plan for drawing lines for congressional districts. A court imposed a plan.

About the same time, then-U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was working on an effort to gain Republican control of the Texas legislature. He succeeded. And in 2002, the legislature started an unusual mid-decade redistricting effort. This was so controversial and so…

JIM LEHRER:

The idea being that, if they redrew the lines, they would improve the number of Republican members of the House that could be elected? OK.

MARCIA COYLE:

Right. That was the goal. And they also felt this reflected what was happening in Texas. Texas voters were increasingly voting Republican.

But the redrawing was so controversial that Texas Democrats in the legislature fled the state twice in order to deprive them of a quorum on a vote. Eventually, they did vote.

JIM LEHRER:

I remember the story. It was quite a story at the time.

MARCIA COYLE:

In fact, DeLay had…

JIM LEHRER:

They went to Oklahoma, and all of this sort of stuff, right?

MARCIA COYLE:

And DeLay actually asked the Federal Aviation Administration to help bring them back. But they did return. They enacted the plan, and it went into effect, was very effective. Republicans did pick up seats.

JIM LEHRER:

Six seats altogether.

MARCIA COYLE:

Six seats, right. But at the same time, it was challenged in court by African-American, Latino-American and Democratic voters, as well as some civil rights groups. They lost in the lower court, appealed to the Supreme Court, and that was the case the court took today.

JIM LEHRER:

And there were two major parts to the challenge and to the decision today. The first had to do with this process that you just outlined, whether or not it was constitutional, because it was done mid-census, right?

MARCIA COYLE:

Right.

JIM LEHRER:

And the court ruled on that today?

MARCIA COYLE:

Yes. Justice Kennedy carried the heavy burden of writing here. There were six separate opinions with many subparts, but he tried in the courtroom to boil it down for the people who were listening and said the first issue for the court was whether this was an unconstitutional, partisan gerrymandering, meaning, was it so infected by politics that it violated the Equal Protection and First Amendment rights of voters, because it was done mid-decade, and also because its sole motivation was partisan gain?

He said, first of all, there's nothing in the Constitution that prohibits mid-decade redistricting.

JIM LEHRER:

That's just a custom, right? That's just the way it's been developed, but there is no law that says that or in the Constitution?

MARCIA COYLE:

Absolutely, absolutely. It's rarely been done, but it was apparently done very early…

JIM LEHRER:

So they approved it? So he said that's fine?

MARCIA COYLE:

Yes. He also said that it appeared there was evidence that there were other motivations here. Some local interests were accommodated, as well as some Democratic concerns.