DeLay's Texas Voting Map Raises Partisanship Issue at Top Court

DeLay's Texas Voting Map Raises Partisanship Issue at Top Court
March 1 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Supreme Court, tackling partisan politics in an election year, will decide whether it should throw out Texas congressional districts engineered by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

The court hears two hours of arguments today on challenges to the redistricting map that helped Republicans gain five U.S. House seats in the 2004 election. Republicans, who took control of the state Legislature a year earlier, departed from the customary practice of redistricting only once after each 10-year census and enacted a new map even though the lines had been redrawn in 2001.

In essence, the court will decide ``whether there's a constitutionally enforceable limit on partisan greed in the redistricting process,'' said Nathaniel Persily, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Voters who challenged the new districts are asking the Supreme Court to rule that the Constitution's equal-protection guarantee bars states from redrawing the map in mid-decade when the only purpose is partisan gain.

The high court has never ruled a voting map unconstitutional on grounds of excessive partisanship.
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