Supreme Court Upholds Most Of Redistricting, 5-4; CD-23 Declared Unconstitutional

State Rep. Aaron Pena’s prediction from yesterday proved correct, via the Chron:

The U.S. Supreme Court today upheld almost all of Texas’ Republican-friendly U.S. House election district map.

By a 5-4 vote, the court said the 23rd District in Southwest Texas, represented by Republican Henry Bonilla, was unconstitutional because its design violated the rights of some Hispanic voters. Reshaping the district, a task that apparently now is assigned to federal court in Texas, would force a change in at least one other neighboring district.

Sadly, however, the gerrymandering of Martin Frost’s old district was allowed to stand, along with the rest of the biased, partisan, map.

And, worse, we may be seeing lawmakers worshipping at the shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Redistricting all across the nation:

The Supreme Court today also upheld the right of states to change their congressional district boundaries more frequently than the traditional every 10 years following each U.S. Census.

As for how to fix the wayward 23rd, Richard Raymond has articulated one solution:

State Rep. Richard Raymond, D-Laredo, a member of the House Redistricting Committee, said he believes the only way to fix the map is to put Laredo in one congressional district. The Republicans had split it between Bonilla’s 23rd District and Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar’s 28th District.

“There isn’t an easy repair. Any time you’ve got to move 100,000 people, there’s a domino effect,” Raymond said. “The easiest fix is you put Laredo back together.”

No one is speculating what this will mean for the current election cycle. I’d speculate that that decision will be up to the trial court, (the three judge panel) which has original jurisdiction over the case.

As late as things are in the year, however, and as difficult as it would be to fix this (given the dominoe effect that would result in shifting about 1/6th of the population of at least one congressional district), I’m betting that this election cycle will proceed with the current map.

My biggest question is, in light of the difficulties that could be faced by allowing voters to vote in the current districts (which would no doubt result in numerous lawsuits out of CD23), will the three-judge panel order the state to go back to the old map pending a fix for the new one?

Only time will tell, and there are literally dozens of ways the courts could order this to split out, and numerous questions that remain: will the court draw the new districts, will the Legislature?

Alas, we have been forsaken by our highest court, but at least one measure of justice may be served with regard to one congressional district.

That, friends, is better than nothing and still allows us to serve this up to Republicans on a silver platter as one more injustice they have committeed.