Judges Redraw 13 Congressional Districts in Texas

A panel of three federal judges reconfigured 13 Texas congressional districts Tuesday, a move affecting nearly half of the state’s House delegation. In ordering the changes, the judges sought to eliminate racial gerrymandering in three mostly minority districts in Houston and Dallas. Ten adjoining districts were affected when those that had been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court were redrawn.

Under the judicial plan, an open primary will be held in the affected districts Nov. 5, with runoffs where necessary Dec. 10. The results of primaries held in March also were thrown out Tuesday.

“For the first time, voters in Texas are going to have sensible and constitutional congressional districts,” said Edward Blum, one of six Republican plaintiffs who challenged the state’s district boundaries in a 1994 lawsuit. The judges rejected arguments that the redistricting will adversely affect minorities, pointing out that their plan provides for higher minority populations in some districts than the state proposed.

Democratic Rep. Gene Green, whose 29th District winds from the working-class Houston Ship Channel to the edges of the affluent Rice University area, said that the judicial panel went to extremes to achieve electoral balance. “You can correct the racial or ethnic gerrymandering without going as far as this court did,” he said. “It looks like they made some partisan decisions, changing Democratic to Republican districts.”

But another Democrat, Texas Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, said that the judges’ approach “does not smack of politics or needlessly change boundaries.” Bullock has no plans to appeal the decision. Texas Atty. Gen. Dan Morales said in a statement Tuesday that he is “reviewing the court’s plan . . . and considering available options.”

In June, the Supreme Court held that the boundaries of the three mostly minority congressional districts were unconstitutionally based on race. They are Green’s oddly shaped district, designed in 1991 to be Houston’s Latino district; a predominantly black district in Houston represented by Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee; and a mostly black district in Dallas represented by Democrat Eddie Bernice Johnson.

Last month, state officials and plaintiffs failed to meet a court-imposed deadline to create a compromise redistricting plan. The federal judges then decided to redraw the lines themselves and order a new round of primaries.