| Subject: Breaking News: Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Texas Redistricting Case; Will a Justice Alito Make a Difference? |
| From: Rick Hasen |
| Date: 12/12/2005, 7:19 AM |
| To: election-law |
After so many relistings, this is a surprise. According to Lyle Denniston, the Court agreed to hear four of the seven appeals. "Those four appear to raise many if not all of the key issues, including whether the Court can fashion a standard for judging when partisan gerrymandering is excessive."
This case originally was sent back for reconsideration in light of Vieth v. Jubelirer. In that case, the Court split 4-1-4 (more details here), with four Justices believing partisan gerrymandering cases non-justiciable, four Justices wanting to impose a reinvigorated test for judging partisan gerrymanders, and Justice Kennedy in the middle, agreeing the cases were justiciable, but rejecting all proposed tests for separating impermissible partisan gerrymanders from the permissible use of party information in redistricting. Both Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice O'Connor were in the block of 4 urging non-justiciability.
So what does the replacement of Rehnquist for Chief Justice Roberts
and the likely replacement of Judge Alito for Justice O'Connor mean for
the outcome in this case? It would mean nothing unless either of these
Justices were to switch positions from their predecessors and agree
such cases should be justiciable (putting those Justices in line with
the four more liberal members of the Court---though it is not clear
that this is a liberal-conservative split). It could be that Justice
Kennedy also has finally decided where he stands on the question. The
case will likely be argued in April. Stay tuned.
-- Rick Hasen William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law Loyola Law School 919 Albany Street Los Angeles, CA 90015-1211 (213)736-1466 (213)380-3769 - fax rick.hasen@lls.edu http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html http://electionlawblog.org