Supreme Court to review Texas redistricting

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The Supreme Court, in an opinion in 2004, upheld a Republican-drawn redistricting plan for Pennsylvania on a vote of 5-4. Lawyers who monitor such cases said at the time it appeared to leave little room for similar Democratic challenges in Texas and elsewhere.

Then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas appeared to signal they would not intervene in any cases involving redistricting done for partisan reasons.

Justice Anthony Kennedy provided a fifth vote for the majority, saying at the time that the Constitution might provide an avenue for relief in some, yet to be defined, circumstances.

Of the justices who rejected the appeal in the Pennsylvania case, Rehnquist has died, and was succeeded by Chief Justice John Roberts. O'Connor has announced her retirement, and Judge Samuel Alito's nomination to replace her is pending in the Senate.

Paul M. Smith, a Washington lawyer who was on the losing side of the Pennsylvania case, said the facts of the Texas case might make a difference at the court. He said that because the Pennsylvania district lines were drawn quickly after the census was taken, "One of the things you couldn't say in that case was their only reason was partisan. ...

"Here we have a trial in which the state conceded that the only reason they did the case at all was partisan," added Smith, who is also involved in the legal attack on the Texas redistricting plan.

Click here for the rest.

Well, this is a strange turn of events. I pretty much thought that this story was over, that the Republicans had won. That's still probably the case, but maybe not. If you don't know the background for this weird and complex political drama, the article gives a pretty good brief history. But if you don't want to click through, the long and the short of it all is that a couple of years back the Texas GOP, through various and possibly illegal methods, managed to ram through the state legislature a new federal congressional district map for the express purpose of giving Republicans the edge as far as voting goes. Since then, the plan's mastermind, Lizard King Tom DeLay, and others have been indicted for some of those aforementioned methods. That the Supreme Court is now going to review the redistricting plan itself is very interesting. It strikes me that there's at least a chance that they could rule against the Republicans: they didn't have to take the case and could have just sat on it; instead, they want to hear it, which means that there are at least a few important legal questions that they want to clear up.

Very cool.

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