In a split decision, that mostly favored the state endorsed 2004 districting plan in Texas. The US Supreme Court said that one district needed to be redrawn or rather recreated to be what it once was. In the name of protecting Hispanic/Latino voting rights. Once again the government has mandated that people be grouped by race and expected to vote alike on the basis of race. It’s been done with Blacks and now Latinos. The Liberals played the race card again and got a partial change. Although for the most part things in Texas will remain the same and Democrats won’t see any real gains in Congress. And that’s the only reason Liberals challenged in the first place. It had nothing to do with race, which was just a cover for some complaints. It was really just a bunch of upset Liberals trying to obtain more power.
Republican Mid-Decade Texas Redistricting Upheld by Top Court
June 28 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the broad parameters of a Republican-drawn congressional redistricting plan in Texas engineered by former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
The court rejected Democratic arguments that the 2004 effort was excessively partisan and improperly took place in the middle of a decade. Even so, the court ordered changes to the district lines.
The court said one district, served by Republican Representative Henry Bonilla, was redrawn in a way that diluted Hispanic voting rights in violation of the U.S. Voting Rights Act.
The cases are Jackson v. Perry, 03-1391; American GI Forum of Texas v. Perry, 03-1396; Lee v. Perry, 03-1399; Travis County v. Perry, 03-1400; and Henderson v. Perry, 03-9644.
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Government should stop trying to electorally segregate minorities. Just the same, Chief Justice John Roberts has found that keeping Texas districts as they were would have given Latinos voting power in more districts than before. So in the race baited challenge, those who wanted to increase Latino voting power have actually diluted it.
See what Chief Justice Roberts found.
Excerpt from US Supreme Court ruling in League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry. Chief Justice John Robert’s dissent. (Emphasis added.)
I must, however, dissent from Part III of the Court’s opinion. According to the District Court’s factual findings, the State’s drawing of district lines in south and west Texas caused the area to move from five out of seven effective Latino opportunity congressional districts, with an additional district “moving” in that direction, to six out of seven effective Latino opportunity districts. See Session v. Perry, 298 F. Supp. 2d 451, 489, 503–504 (ED Tex. 2004) (per curiam). The end result is that while Latinos make up 58% of the citizen voting age population in the area, they control 85% (six of seven) of the districts under the State’s plan.
In the face of these findings, the majority nonetheless concludes that the State’s plan somehow dilutes the voting strength of Latinos in violation of §2 of the Voting Rights Act. The majority reaches its surprising result because it finds that Latino voters in one of the State’s Latino opportunity districts—District 25—are insufficiently compact, in that they consist of two different groups, one from around the Rio Grande and another from around Austin. According to the majority, this may make it more difficult for certain Latino-preferred candidates to be elected from that district—even though Latino voters make up 55% of the citizen voting age population in the district and vote as a bloc. Id., at 492, n. 126, 503. The majority prefers old District 23, despite the District Court determination that new District 25 is “a more effective Latino opportunity district than Congressional District 23 had been.” Id., at 503; see id., at 489, 498–499. The District Court based that determination on a careful examination of regression analysis showing that “the Hispanic-preferred candidate [would win] every primary and general election examined in District 25,” id., at 503 (emphasis added), compared to the only partial success such candidates enjoyed in former District 23, id., at 488, 489, 496.
The majority dismisses the District Court’s careful fact finding on the ground that the experienced judges did not properly consider whether District 25 was “compact”for purposes of §2. Ante, at 24. But the District Court opinion itself clearly demonstrates that the court carefully considered the compactness of the minority group in District 25, just as the majority says it should have. The District Court recognized the very features of District 25 highlighted by the majority and unambiguously concluded, under the totality of the circumstances, that the district was an effective Latino opportunity district, and that no violation of §2 in the area had been shown.
Unable to escape the District Court’s fact finding, the majority is left in the awkward position of maintaining that its theory about compactness is more important under §2 than the actual prospects of electoral success for Latino-preferred candidates under a State’s apportionment plan. And that theory is a novel one to boot. Never before has this or any other court struck down a State’s redistricting plan under §2, on the ground that the plan achieves the maximum number of possible majority-minority districts, but loses on style points, in that the minority voters in one of those districts are not as “compact” as the minority voters would be in another district were the lines drawn differently. Such a basis for liability pushes voting rights litigation into a whole new area—an area far removed from the concern of the Voting Rights Act to ensure minority voters an equal opportunity “to elect representatives of their choice.” 42 U. S. C. §1973(b).
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Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito all joined Roberts in dissenting on that part of the opinion.
Allahpundit at Hot Air has some excellent commentary about this and why race based districting is a bad idea.
