The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review the controversial 2003 redrawing of Texas congressional districts that Democratic Party officials claim was unconstitutional because it disenfranchised Democratic voters and was improperly designed primarily to ensure the Republican Party’s control of Congress. In so doing, the high court took on four cases that could have considerable impact on the next year’s House and Senate elections.
The Texas districts were redrawn in 2003 under the direction of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who is currently fighting state criminal charges that were the result largely from the Republicans’ financing of the redistricting initiative. The Texas redistricting that was in effect during 2004 election had a considerable impact, as four incumbent Democratic members of the Texas congressional delegation lost re-election, one switched parties, and one open Democratic seat went Republican. The Texas net gain of six seats was enough to offset other Republican congressional losses, and prevented the Democratic Party from strengthening its minority by three seats. If the Supreme Court strikes down the Texas redistricting plan, then the decision could give the Democrat Party a considerable boost during next year’s elections by giving Democratic candidates a Supreme Court decision on which to base charges of cronyism and abuse of power against the GOP.

The cases revolve around the requirement that all states each decade must use revised census data to redraw congressional districts to adjust for population shifts. In order to fulfill the “one person, one vote” doctrine, each district should include about 600,000 individuals, but whatever party that controls Congress at a particular time has traditionally gerrymandered districts to facilitate the party’s chances of retaining seats (and thus, power) in Congress. The Supreme Court will consider a number of issues in the four cases, including whether Texas violated the one person, one vote doctrine by using outdated census data in drawing the new districts, whether the plan constituted “partisan gerrymandering,” and whether the redistricting map is constitutional under the Voting Rights Act. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division recommended against approval of the 2003 Texas redistricting plan under the Voting Rights Act, but the Department and approved it, anyway.
Lyle Denniston over at the Scotus Blog provides the following analysis in his post the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the cases:

When the new cases are heard, the focus will be on Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who provided the decisive fifth vote on April 28, 2004, to keep alive the possibility that a judicial standard could be developed to judge political gerrymanders’ constitutionality. He did so in the case of Vieth v. Jubelirer, a Pennsylvania congressional redistricting case. After that, in October 2004, the Court sent the Texas redistricting challenges back to the U.S. District Court that had rejected those claims, with instructions to reconsider the plan in the light of the Vieth decision. The three-judge District Court on June 9 of this year again rejected the challenges, putting new emphasis this time on the claim of a one-person, one-vote violation in the partisan gerrymandering.
By the time the new cases come up for argument, there may be two new Justices joining in the review — Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., of course, but also Justice-nominee Samuel Alito, Jr., if the Senate has confirmed him by then. Roberts replaces the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Alito would replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Both of those had voted in Vieth to deny judicial review of partisan gerrymander challenges, but that view did not prevail then.

The preliminary indication from the the Supreme Court is that oral argument in the cases will take place in the afternoon session on March 1, 2006.