District Court, Splitting 2-1, Finds Texas Congressional Districts Violate VRA

[cinyc]

Replacing one poor CD for another, hosting the Pubs on their own petard. It's one thing to strike down the plot to neutalize white Dems in Travis. It's another to require something else, that I don't think comports with prior SCOTUS precedent, and is just not justified on public policy grounds, and certainly if the alternative comports with good redistricting principles, and is obviously not out to screw minorities. The court did mention the impermissible Pub intent, that it found. Minorities should not be used as pawns, splitting them up, to neutralize white Dems.

No.  Best I can tell, the courts would rather minorities be used as pawns to neutralize white and Hispanic Republicans.  That's all I can ever make heads or tails out of these cases, and is the realpolitic of recent VRA decisions.

Packing minorities into a compact district is bad because nonsensical reasons - even when geographical compactness should dictate a compact district, say, in the Rio Grande Valley or within municipal boundaries.  Not packing enough minorities into a district is bad when not enough Hispanics bother to vote the way the courts want them to - i.e. for Democrats.  

VRA jurisprudence is a mess.

[cinyc]

Replacing one poor CD for another, hosting the Pubs on their own petard. It's one thing to strike down the plot to neutalize white Dems in Travis. It's another to require something else, that I don't think comports with prior SCOTUS precedent, and is just not justified on public policy grounds, and certainly if the alternative comports with good redistricting principles, and is obviously not out to screw minorities. The court did mention the impermissible Pub intent, that it found. Minorities should not be used as pawns, splitting them up, to neutralize white Dems.

No.  Best I can tell, the courts would rather minorities be used as pawns to neutralize white and Hispanic Republicans.  That's all I can ever make heads or tails out of these cases, and is the realpolitic of recent VRA decisions.

Packing minorities into a compact district is bad because nonsensical reasons - even when geographical compactness should dictate a compact district, say, in the Rio Grande Valley or within municipal boundaries.  Not packing enough minorities into a district is bad when not enough Hispanics bother to vote the way the courts want them to - i.e. for Democrats.  

VRA jurisprudence is a mess.

"Neutralizing" white and hispanic Republicans IS the main point the courts are trying to accomplish.    The Republicans hold 25 of 36 seats with 57% of the vote, that's about a 13% discrepancy.   The vast majority of those being voted in by Anglo majorities (Probably all but two I think...?).    Minorities in Texas are under-represented in Texas,  no matter how you slice it, and the maps are almost entirely to blame.

Minorities are underepresented only if you live in a fantasy world where all minorities, particularly Texas Hispanics, must vote for Democrats - if they bother to vote at all.  It's not the Republicans' fault that Democrat-leaning Hispanics often don't bother to show up to vote, or when they do, don't unilaterally block vote the way you want them to.  All they have to be given is the opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice - and in a 60% CVAP Hispanic district, they certainly have that if they block vote and show up to the polls.  That they don't block vote the way the courts and Democrats want them to shouldn't be grounds to overturn the district in a rational, sane world.  The alternative would be to pack the districts with even more Hispanics, but the courts would likely overturn that as impermissible packing - which is even greater nonsense, especially when Democrats tend to self-pack themselves into urban areas to begin with. 

I maintain that even without the VRA-required racial gerrymandering, Republicans would have an advantage compared to the vote percentage in almost any non-Democatic gerrymandered Texas map, even a neutral one.  Democrats are self-packed into urban areas.