Texas ruling boils down to politics vs. race

High court isn’t likely to block redistricting effort that could affect control of the House.

- DAVID G. SAVAGE

The Texas redistricting case now before the Supreme Court turns on a question that often divides judges: Were the voting districts drawn based on politics or race? The answer, likely to come in a few days, could shift five congressional seats and tip political control of the House of Representatives after next year's midterm elections.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who oversees appeals from Texas, put a temporary hold on a judicial ruling that branded the newly drawn Texas voting map a "racial gerrymander." The state's lawyers asked for a decision by Monday, noting that candidates have a Dec. 8 deadline to file for election.

They said the judges violated the so-called Purcell principle by making major changes in the election map "midway through the candidate filing period," and that alone calls for blocking it.

Texas Republicans have reason to be confident the court's conservative majority will side with them.

"We start with a presumption that the legislature acted in good faith," Alito wrote for a 6-3 majority last year in a South Carolina case.

That state's Republican lawmakers had moved tens of thousands of Black voters in or out of newly drawn congressional districts and said they did so not because of their race but because they were likely to vote as Democrats.

In 2019 the conservatives upheld partisan gerrymandering by a 5-4 vote, ruling that drawing election districts is a "political question" left to states and their lawmakers, not judges.

All the justices-consersay vative and liberal drawing districts based on the race of the voters violates the Constitution and its ban on racial discrimination. But the conservatives say it's hard to separate race from politics.

They also looked poised to restrict the reach of the Voting Rights Act in a pending case from Louisiana.