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Supreme Court to consider Texas redistricting | TheHill

posted onApril 24, 2018
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Article snippet: The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday on whether Texas’s legislature discriminated against Hispanic and black citizens when drawing two congressional districts and a host of legislative ones. If the court decides against Texas, it could force a redrawing of the map that could have ramifications for the 35th District, now held by Rep. MORE (R). It’s possible some of the House districts surrounding those two could also be affected. Court battles prevented those district lines from going into effect, with a temporary court-ordered map used instead in the 2012 elections. In 2013, the legislature officially approved the court’s map. The district court in San Antonio then ruled against the use of those maps, a decision appealed by the state of Texas. The Supreme Court took up the case on appeal from the state, but it still has to decide whether it has jurisdiction to hear it. Opponents of the legislative lines argue the state should not have appealed the initial decision directly to the Supreme Court. The battle over whether the court should be hearing the case is likely to be an issue in the oral arguments on Tuesday. “Two-and-a-half million Texans are impacted, and that’s just in the districts that were declared illegal,” said state Rep. Rafael Anchia (D), chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, one of the plaintiffs in the case. Texas argues that because the state used the court-drawn maps for the 2012 election, the 2011 redistricting plan... Link to the full article to read more

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