Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to take up an appeal of a lower court ruling that invalidated two of Texas’ congressional districts.
“It’s fitting that the Supreme Court hear this case, given that it ordered the district court in San Antonio to draw the congressional maps in 2012 that were adopted by the Legislature in 2013 and used in the last three election cycles in Texas,” Paxton said in a news release. “The lower court’s decision to invalidate parts of the maps it drew and adopted is inexplicable and indefensible. We’re eager for the high court to take up the case.”
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Immediately after the lower court’s August decision, Paxton appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in September sided with Texas and blocked the lower court’s ruling until it could fully consider the case. That ruling allowed the state to keep intact its electoral maps through the 2018 elections, a major defeat for the plaintiffs, who had hoped for a more advantageous political landscape during the midterm elections.
Now Paxton is asking the court to settle the issue once and for all. The lower court ruling also invalidated nine statehouse districts. Paxton said he will ask the Supreme Court to take up that question, too.
See here, here, and here for some background. This was where things were always headed, so now it’s just a matter of time. Not in time for 2018, of course, but it’s something, I suppose. Well, not for everyone.
Juanita Wallace was among many voters of color who sued the state over its redistricting plans in 2011, accusing lawmakers of redrawing its political boundaries in a way that diluted the power of black and Latino Texans.
Six years later, several elections have played out using embattled state House and congressional maps, even though federal judges so far ruled that Texas leaders intentionally discriminated in approving the boundaries. And the maps will probably stay in place for the 2018 elections as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs the state’s latest appeal.
Wallace — a longtime educator, civil rights advocate and former head of the Dallas NAACP — won’t be around to see the result. She died of cancer last year at age 70.
“To me, it gets to this question of how do you fight back against this,” said Allison Riggs, who represented Wallace as the senior voting rights attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “You want to give this complicated legal analysis a human side, but you’re literally dragging the litigation so long that people are passing away. It’s nuts.”
You know what they say about justice delayed. See the brief filed by the state for more.