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Supreme court largely backs Texas Republicans over electoral maps
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to Texas Republicans by reviving electoral districts drawn by the state legislature that had been thrown out by a lower court for diluting the influence of black and Hispanic voters.In a 5-4 ruling, the court’s conservative majority ruled that the challengers had not done enough to show that the Republican-led Texas legislature acted with discriminatory intent when it adopted new electoral maps in 2013 for state legislative and U.S. congressional seats. Republican President Donald Trump’s administration had backed Texas in the case. The court did rule, however, that one of the state legislature districts was unlawful. Last September, the high court put on hold two lower court rulings from earlier in 2017 that had invalidated a series of Texas electoral districts. The justices then, as they were in Monday’s ruling, were divided 5-4, with the conservative justices backing the Texas Republicans and the liberals dissenting. In the ruling, conservative Justice Samuel Alito said the lower court had "committed a fundamental legal error" in the way it had analyzed the dispute. Posted by: Besoeker 2018-06-25 |
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