Supreme Count upholds (most of) Texas' redistricting.

The U.S. Supreme Court essentially upheld the Tom DeLay inspired (and paid for) mid-decade redistricting by the Texas Legislature. Except that the district 23 especially designed to reelect Tony Bonilla (R, TX-23) was declared unconstitutional.

"Here is a key paragraph in Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's plurality opinion in the Texas redistricting case: "In sum, we disagree with appellants' view that a legislature's decision to override a valid, court-drawn plan mid-decade is sufficiently suspect to give shape to a reliable standard for identifying unconstiutitonal political gerrymanders. We conclude that appellants have established no legally iimpermissible use of political classifications. For this reason, they state no claim on which relief may be granted for their statewide challenge."

The District that the Court found legally wanting is a huge Latino-dominated district that the state created in an attempt to salvage the political fortunes of a Latino member of Congress, Republican Henry Bonilla. He had been losing strength among Latino voters, so the state legislature drew a new district by including a largely Anglo, Republican area in central Texas. That, a Court majority found, was the product of a "troubling blend of politics and race -- and the resulting vote dilution of a group that was beginning to achieve [the Voting Rights Act's] goal of overcoming prior electorial discrimination." It "cannot be sustained," the Court concluded.

Whether the state legislature can repair the problem found by the Court in that one District without redrawing the plan statewide is uncertain at this point. The Court majority found no legal flaw in any other part of the plan."

So middecade redistricting as a result of the turnover of a legislature to an opposing party is legal. The total elimination of the District that Martin Frost used to represent in Fort Worth and Arlington by sending tendrils of surrounding Republican districts into East Fort Worth to "sop up" Democratic voters and swamp then with surbaban Republicans is legal. The only thing that wasn't legal was to remove errant Democratic voting Latinos from Henry Bolilla's district 23 and replace them with reliable Republican white voters.

I'm sure the Republican Texas Legislature's computers will make short work of the minor discrepancy in district 23 with a minimum of damage to the otber Republican-dominated districts created in Texas. We can thank Bush, Frist, and Joe Lieberman for Roberts and Alito on the Supreme Counrt which gave us this abortion of a decision.

The actual decision can be found here. The AP wirestory is here.