U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and his fellow justices are being asked to stop redistricting maps in Texas drawn by three federal judges who voided the plan of the state Legislature. The three judges concluded state lawmakers purposefully diluted the strength of minority populations. The 2010 Census confirmed that minorities provided the vast majority of the state’s demographic growth since 2000. Scalia oversees appeals from Texas. The Court’s response could be instructive to other states.
Fierce battles over redistricting have broken out – as they do after every Census – over how states and localities adjust for changes in their populations. Districts must be about the same size, and at the heart of the battles is the growth of the HispanicLatino population.
Years ago, a very close friend of mine worked for the Texas Comptroller’s Office, which played a critical part in the redistricting process. An honest, no-nonsense engineer and a mathematical genius, he had a penchant for politics and geography.
He himself was a Democrat but his knowledge of Texas and his grasp of geography often made him chafe. He resisted having to reach out to areas with no commonality of interests to achieve political results. The perfect political-map drawer, he also spoke bluntly. “We’re having trouble in Dallas County,” he confided one day. “Too many Mexicans and too many Republicans all over the place in a confined space.” I laughed uproariously, knowing what he meant.
On the one hand, more Texans were voting Republican and, on the other, the HispanicLatino population was exploding. The problem for incumbent Democratic officeholders was not the growth of the HispanicLatino population so much as the growth of the non-voting HispanicLatino population – meaning Republican voters would hold more sway across larger geographic areas. “Soon, that is not going to be possible,” my friend said. “And all hell will break out.”
That day has arrived, and it is not surprising that hellish redistricting battles have broken out at every level of government from California to Florida to Massachusetts. The HispanicLatino population increased by about 8.3 million in the top five states with the highest concentration of HispanicLatinos; the second five gained an additional 2.5 million. In Texas, HispanicLatino growth alone would equate to four new – and probably Democratic congressional districts – in a state with 36 districts. With control of the House of Representatives at stake, each seat is to fight for during redistricting.
Yet all of this is about more than elbowing opponents aside. The boundaries of geography as much as rapid population change are driving the current fights over redistricting. Rightly fearing their plans would meet judicial objection, Republicans – in state legislatures and local governments and in the courts – are trying to undo previous judicial rulings that history and demography have proven out. In landmark cases, previous justices laid down the law that no vote can count for more than another – thus requiring districts to be the same size.
Even as large a state of Texas is a confined space, and the Legislature’s map was a clear example of individuals taking it upon themselves to thwart the normal demographic evolution of democratic results. Lawmakers rewrote voter identification rules and reordered ballot box procedures and, if the past is prelude, Republican activists will engage in voter harassment and cavalierly purge voters from registration rolls and do everything possible to tear at the new reality around them that should be molded into a positive, unifying force.
The Court and Scalia in particular – already tarred by history for his role in Bush v. Gore – are in danger of adding to the dissension and polarization that are getting the country nowhere.
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