The Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision yesterday (earlier posts here) ordering congressional districts in south Texas redrawn because a 2003 redistricting map orchestrated by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was designed to disenfranchise Hispanic voters so that vulnerable Republican incumbent Rep. Henry Bonilla could maintain his seat. However, a sharply-split Court rejected a broader Democratic challenge to the DeLay redistricting plan that prompted the new Republican majority in the Texas Legislature to throw out existing districts in favor of new ones designed for partisan benefit. Charles Kuffner, who has followed the redistricting case closely, has more here and an extensive archive on the case here. Amy Howe passes along what appears to be an interesting error in the opinion, a pdf of which is here.
The bottom line on this incredibly split-decision (the justices filed six separate opinions concurring and dissenting from parts of the ruling) is that that Justice Anthony Kennedy’s controlling opinion leaves open the possibility that the Court could step in someday to set limits for partisan gerrymanders if future litigants find “a manageable, reliable measure of fairness” for doing so. Four liberal-leaning justices joined Justice Kennedy in concluding that the south Texas districts violated the Voting Rights Act and must be redrawn. But Justice Kennedy and the four more conservative justices concluded that the state-wide map complied with Constitutional requirements and that a second district — which Democrats claimed disenfranchised black voters in Austin — posed no voting-rights violation. Just to give you an idea of how the Court is all over the place on these issus, Justices Thomas and Scalia would have simply dismissed the case as beyond the scope of the courts to resolve, while several Justices — including Samuel Alito and John Roberts — were in a group that left open the possibility that the Court might in the future come up with a legal test to be applied in this type of case.