Gerrymandering Is Bigger inn Texas

Texas is already the 8^th most gerrymandered state in the nation. However, this seems to be insufficient to protect those who benefit from gerrymandering. Yes, politicians and political parties. Texas is currently seeking to further gerrymander its districts to gain greater Republican dominance in the state and more importantly in the US Congress.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There isn’t anything illegal about gerrymandering based on purely political interests. I know this because the Supreme Court stated very clearly that it is perfectly legal (that is Constitutional) to gerrymander a state’s districts based on partisan political objectives. As a result, Americans have seen more and more partisan gerrymandering determine their future, their interests, their rights, and their freedoms (or lack thereof). Exactly as the Founding Fathers would have expected.

As Texas Republicans push to undertake a new redistricting in advance of the 2026 midterm elections, it is happening without any clear rationale or precedent as a basis. There is no claim being made by the Republicans that the maps that they just approved in 2021 are biased and discriminatory against some group of citizens. No, this is a purely partisan effort and unrelated to the Constitutional requirement to do so based on the US census done every ten years. As politicians are oft heard to say when they want to besmirch something, they will say: “It’s all political!”  And, they’d be right here, except it’s not the Republicans who can say it, it’s the Democrats. As an aside, I don’t really understand why politicians would think stating that something being done by politicians is “political” is an informed or intelligent statement. They are politicians and everything they do is “political”. That I don’t view politicians as very bright is the best reason that I have for this peculiar behavior.

But back to Texas’s gerrymandering effort.

We have political, legal, and social-media fights about the redistricting gerrymandering effort. The Republicans will ultimately win, because they have the majority of the legislature: both House and Senate, the Attorney General, and the Governor; plus the Supreme Court has said you can gerrymander the heck out of your state for political purposes until the Supreme Court rules otherwise.

The Democrats are trying to slow down the redistricting process by preventing Texas’s legislature from authorizing the redistricting process. This is more for show than substance, and it will fail to stop the Republicans. New district maps will be generated with the intention to deprive some Texans with the equal treatment and rights that schools teach is an American value.

The fights that still have some possibility of success are lawsuits against the Republican effort. Because there are a variety of groups that have sought to file a lawsuit against this redistricting effort, those different groups’ lawsuits have been consolidated into a single lawsuit on the basis that their group is being discriminated against. In general, these groups and the case will argue that their minority groups are being disenfranchised by the partisan redistricting which will dilute the value of their votes due to partisan gerrymandering. This is the general argument that most gerrymandering lawsuits follow. It is also the least compelling to the Supreme Court’s Justices who are predisposed to dismiss the argument that individuals’ rights are violated on a one-man one-vote basis, and that there are no group rights to equal representation in the Constitution.

We should expect that SCOTUS will rule against the case if it makes it to them.

This doesn’t mean that there are not superior bases for lawsuits against this Texas gerrymandering effort. There are, and they can be based upon the Justices’ own Opinion document about the legality of partisan gerrymandering. The difficulty here is that you need to understand how to use the Justices’ reasoning to make your case; and it is not at all clear that the Justices themselves even know that they provided these guidelines. It is also unclear if most people or entities that see gerrymandering as an overly abused and corruptive activity by politicians and political parties are aware of how to use these arguments to support their fight and to win their lawsuit.

Another obstacle that the Justices will construct to prevent a win is their fallback argument that there is no ‘standard’ that they can rely upon to assess that gerrymandering is unfairly treating any group that is being disenfranchised and whose rights are being violated. There are ways to fight this position by the Justices, but it takes the same critical thinking that is missing from most gerrymandering lawsuits.

There is still hope, but that hope would be better served if better leadership were part of the legal fight.