Colorado Redistricting Struck Down
By Karl-Thomas Musselman
Good news this morning from Colorado where the State Supreme Court has just issued a 5-2 ruling striking down the General Assembly's Re-Redistricting plan as well as their "reapportionment anytime" interpretation of the State Constitution.
Case Announcement The first two links are the opinions.
Via Off the Kuff and dKos
In its ruling, the full court decided that a Republican redistricting plan, pushed through the state General Assembly in the closing days of this year's session, was unconstitutional because Colorado's congressional districts had already been redrawn in 2002 by a Denver judge after lawmakers could not agree.
The Supreme Court decided that under Colorado's 1876 constitution, new congressional boundaries could be drawn only once a decade, following the federal census.
"The plain language of this constitutional provision not only requires redistricting after a federal census and before the ensuing general election, but also restricts the legislature from redistricting at any other time," said an opinion delivered by Mary J. Mullarkey, chief justice of the seven-member court. "In short, the state constitution limits redistricting to once per census, and nothing in state or federal law negates this limitation. Having failed to redistrict when it should have, the General Assembly has lost its chance to redistrict until after the 2010 federal census."
Two justices issued dissenting opinions in the case, which Mullarkey said pitted "two strongly opposed views of the Colorado constitution" against each other.
Remember, this ruling was based on the Colorado State Constitution which of course applies just to that state so its effects on Texas legal efforts are marginal, considering we are in federal court. There was a federal court challenge in Colorado but it chose to wait on the state ruling. So unless that legal avenue restarts and goes to the US Supreme Court, Texas Democrats have been handed a moral victory at best.
Not that I'm going to complain about that.
Posted by Karl-Thomas Musselman at December 1, 2003 11:41 AM
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Well, since the Colorado decision was based solely on their state Constitution's explicit restriction of multiple redistricting, then the obvious question is: is there anything in the Texas Constitution which similarly restricts redistricting more than once per census...as opposed to requiring at least one redistricting per census?
I have to assume we would have heard about it by now if that were the case here in Texas.
