A panel of three federal judges in San Antonio announced Thursday they would postpone a trial over the redistricting plan for the Texas Senate so they can focus on developing interim redistricting maps for the 2012 election.
Texas Redistricting has more on the court’s action and on one possible map. Basically, once the DC Circuit court denied summary judgment on preclearance, we were headed this direction. The one remaining issue was the separate lawsuit filed by Sen. Wendy Davis, Rep. Marc Veasey, and others specifically about the Senate map, and now that all parties in that lawsuit have agreed to postpone in light of the DC court’s ruling, here we are. Since Monday was originally going to be the start of the filing season, it would be rather poetic if the interim maps made their appearance then. In any event, filing season now begins November 28, but you figure they’ll want to give potential candidates as much time as they can. If we don’t get a map Monday, we should get one pretty soon thereafter. Burka has more.
S160 is interesting, but it seems pretty dramatic for a court to implement. Don’t courts try to keep the existing map as much as possible? S160 completely alters District 8; I don’t think the current map District 8 and the S160 District 8 share a single precinct. I know Shapiro is retiring, but still.
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