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Arizona, Texas Redistricting Going To Supreme Court

Posted by: Linda Carbonell on November 29, 2011.

1812 "Gerrymandering" political cartoon

The Republican parties in Texas and Arizona lost the first round of Federal law suits concerning their Congressional redistricting maps. In Arizona, Governor Jan Brewer was told that she did not have the right or power to dump the state’s Constitution and fire the non-partisan redistricting board. Texas was told that the extreme gerrymandering their redistricting commission put together to prevent the increase in minority voters gaining any seats in the Texas lege was wrong. Both states have filed with the United States Supreme Court to have the local Federal court rulings overturned.

If the SCOTUS were to rule in favor of Governor Brewer, they would be guilty of partisan judicial activism. The Arizona State Constitution is very clear. When the census is done every ten years, there will be a non-partisan commission created to draw new Congressional districts based solely and exclusively on population. The commission cannot, by Constitutional definition, use past voting records to draw the districts. When Gov. Brewer fired the commission and attempted to put in place a new commission that would take voting patterns into consideration, she was violating the Arizona Constitution. The absolute nature of this Constitutional language will hopefully prevent the SCOTUS from overturning the local ruling. But with this SCOTUS, there is no guarantee that they will rule according to the letter of any law. After all, this is the SCOTUS that decided that corporations are people who enjoy the rights and liberties of human beings under our Constitution.

The Texas situation is not as clear cut. The gerrymandering is obvious. The greatest number of new Texans are along the Gulf Coast and the border. They are displaced African-Americans from Louisiana and new naturalized Hispanics. The Texas lege’s redistricting map looks like a gathering of snakes – long districts anchored in the areas with the population increases and stretching back into rural Texas. The Federal District Court in San Antonio ruled that the new districts were unacceptable because they were defined by voting records and not by population. The Court issued a new map that ignored voting patterns and set the new districts by population only, and with Texas gaining 4 new Congressional seats, the population-only maps would probably add up to a dozen Democrats to the lege and tip the balance of Texas’ Congressional delegation. It could also tip the presidential election since Texas is a winner-take-all for electoral votes.

Texas is notorious for its gerrymandered districts, though it isn’t as extreme about it as California has been. We have seen the state’s Democrats run across state lines to block passage of the new districts in the past. But Texas’ Constitution is not as clear about the composition of the redistricting commission or the method by which the districts will be drawn as Arizona’s is. Every state needs a Constitutional amendment to match Arizona’s redistricting procedure if they don’t already have these procedures in place.

It is absolutely necessary that these suits be heard by the SCOTUS during the spring term if the Republicans are going to have any shot at getting the gerrymandered districts they want to further suppress the Democratic vote.. They cannot wait for the October term. The Democratic National Committee needs to do more than assist with the defense of these suits. They need to focus on the redistricting and its place in the overall attempt to create a one-party state our of our Republic during the coming year’s election campaigns. After all, if the Republicans had a viable message and felt they truly represented the people of this nation, represented the 99% instead of the 1% who are funding their campaigns, they wouldn’t need to work so hard to suppress the vote.