Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that the state's 35 Congressional districts are legal as they are currently drawn, and can be used in the 2018 primary and general elections, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
"Attorney General Paxton feels that judges should get out of the business of drawing maps," Paxton spokesman Mark Rylander told News Radio 1200 WOAI.
A three judge panel in San Antonio ruled earlier this year that two Congressional districts, the 35th District, which stretches from Austin to San Antonio and is represented by Democrat Lloyd Doggett, and the 27th District, largely in Nueces County and represented by Republican Blake Farenthold, were drawn with 'discriminatory intent' and are illegal under current federal law.
Rylander says the maps themselves were drawn by the court in 2010 following a previous ruling, and by ruling that they are discriminatory in effect amounts to one panel of federal judges saying another panel of federal judges is a bunch of bigots.
"The lower court's decision to invalidate parts of the maps that it drew is inexplicable and indefensible," Rylander said.
But Nina Perales, Chief Counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, says the 2012 rewrite was 'temporary by design.'
"Let the lower court do its job, and if there is any problem with the remedy, the Supreme Court can take it up later," she said.
The Supreme Court's decision in this case is expected to be guided by a Wisconsin case in which the justices were asked to decide how far a political party in power can go to redraw district boundaries to protect their own candidates.
Current law states that political districts can be drawn to favor a particular political party, but cannot be drawn to disadvantage racial minorities. Since voting patterns in Texas largely follow ethnic divisions, with Anglos largely leaning Republican and Hispanics and African Americans leaning Democrat, that the court will have to decide whether the districts were created on legal political or illegal ethnic lines.
Paxton has asked the high court to issue its ruling quickly, because candidates are already announcing and fundraising for the March 2018 primaries.