In a well-deserved defeat for liberals trying to steal Texas’ elections, the US Supreme Court today tossed out the legislative and congressional district maps drawn by a panel of San Antonio judges.
To account for population changes following the 2010 Census, the Texas Legislature fulfilled their constitutional duty of drawing new representational boundaries. Liberal Democrats — who have been losing elections in droves for more than a decade — took the maps to court, hoping judges would toss out the legislature-drawn lines.
The San Antonio court obliged. The three-judge panel drew maps with little regard for a decade’s worth of elections and the intent of the Texas Legislature. Indeed, it looked like liberal pundits and Democratic Party hacks were the ones doing the drawing for the judges.
In vacating the San Antonio judges’ ordered maps today, the US Supreme Court said the final maps need to more fully reflect the legislative and congressional boundaries drawn by the Texas Legislature.
While we are still without maps, the SCOTUS ruling today at least moves Texas closer to the point where we can hold primary elections. Originally set for early March, the Democrat-led exercise in judicial activism has delayed the primaries and spun the 2012 election cycle into chaos.
It is possible Texas’ primaries could be held in April, but they could still be pushed further back depending on how quickly it takes for the maps to be re-drawn.
Representational districts should be set by elected officials, not unelected judges. When it comes to redistricting, the courts have a legitimate role in identifying problems, but not engineering electoral outcomes.
The US Supreme Court got it right today: reinforcing the power of state legislatures to draw their representational maps and protecting Texas’ elections from judicial activism.
UPDATE: After writing this piece, Michael Quinn Sullivan was a guest of the Mark Davis Show on WBAP in the Metroplex. Listen Mark and Michael talk about the SCOTUS decision here:
