Bloomberg: Texas Voting Rights Clash Puts U.S. High Court in Election Fray

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-09/texas-voting-rights-clash-puts-u-s-high-court-in-election-fray.html



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The Texas case will determine the power of judges to redraw voting-district lines -- and will test the strength of a central provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act: its requirement that some states get federal “preclearance” before changing election rules. Texas is asking the high court to put in place three Republican-drawn maps for this year’s elections, even though they haven’t received that preclearance.

“It would essentially give a major way for states to circumvent the Voting Rights Act,” said Pamela Karlan, a professor at Stanford Law School who represents the Texas Mexican American Legislative Caucus, one of the groups battling the state’s Republicans in court.

...

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the judges overstepped their bounds and should have deferred to the legislature’s plans in the absence of evidence that the state had violated the voting law. “Quite stunningly, what the lower court did was to issue a remedy without finding any wrong,” the Republican attorney general said in an interview.

The Supreme Court signaled last month that it is inclined to agree with that argument, temporarily blocking the San Antonio court’s interim maps from going into effect and agreeing to hear arguments.


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Scuba's prediction: SCOTUS will decide in favor of the Republicans by a 5 - 4 margin. Wagers may be placed by sending me a private message.