Here’s a legislative to do list item that has been completely off the radar.
Rep. Ramon Romero
Federal courts last year gave Texas lawmakers 45 days from the beginning of this year’s legislative session to start redrawing boundary lines for Fort Worth’s House District 90 because of gerrymandering.
The 45-day mark [was] Thursday.
If a proposal isn’t introduced within the first month and a half of the session — or if it doesn’t appear likely that a new plan will come up during the session that wraps up May 27 — then the three-judge panel in a U.S. District Court in San Antonio will undertake the “unwelcome obligation” of fixing the district.
So far, no bill to redraw the district represented by Democrat Ramon Romero has been filed.
“The Supreme Court has ruled that we must have a narrow tailored correction to District 90,” Romero said. “The most narrow tailored line is that those precincts split by amendments in 2013 must be brought back to the way they were before.
“Will the district be fixed by the Legislature or will the Legislature pass on filing a bill … to let the courts do it?”
He said the next step is to see what fixes are proposed by the Texas Attorney General’s Office.
See here and here for the background. This was brought to my attention by regular commenter blank, who also noted it at Daily Kos. This story was published on Tuesday, and as far as I can tell, no bills relevant to this issue have been filed. That doesn’t mean that the courts will absolutely jump in with their own fix – the AG will propose something, the deadline for all bill filing hasn’t passed yet, and I’m sure the court won’t consider taking action until after the session if nothing passes and someone files a motion. Whatever the case, this is out there. What makes it more complicated, as blank noted in his Kos comment, is that if such a bill gets filed and heard in committee, it could be amended in all kinds of ways as it works through the system. You could in effect redistrict the entire Lege using this bill as a vehicle if you have the votes for it. Or you may just decide nothing is worth the bother and leave it to the court to clean up. I have no idea which way this will go, but we’ll keep an eye on it.
I did a few quick key word searches on bills filed and didn’t see anything, so my earlier guess that it goes to the courts for tweaks seems even more likely than it did earlier this week. Nonetheless, I agree that we still need to keep an eye out just in case.