When You Cannot Decide which Route is the Best on the Map of Texas

2011 – 2018 Texas Redistricting Laws

The conservative faction of the Supreme Court — whose questioning was dominated by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito — signaled that it had no problem with the most recent round of delay tactics Texas employed to get the case back in front of the high court for a second time.

The case is called Abbott v. Perez, and it stems from multiple challenges to the legislative maps Texas drew after the 2010 Census. One question the Supreme Court examined was whether this was even the proper juncture for it to intervene. A three-judge district court in San Antonio has issued multiple rulings finding the maps discriminatory against Latino and African American voters, but had not yet completed the remedy stage when Texas successfully sought a stay in the case from Justice Samuel Alito.

The liberals on the court stressed that intervening now would open the doors for any case to seek Supreme Court review without a final ruling or a formal preliminary injunction.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, that under Texas’ theory, every time a district court judge declared a legislative district illegally drawn, it could be appealed to the Supreme Court, before the remedial stage.

The Map, The Courts and lonely Fort Worth, Texas