Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

WASHINGTON – In a move that could redefine the limits of partisan politics, the U.S. Supreme Court said Monday that it will hear four Texas cases challenging the redrawing of congressional districts two years ago by the Republican-dominated Legislature.

The court also agreed to expedite the four cases, filed by minorities, Democratic officeholders and others who say they have been disenfranchised by the GOP-drawn districts.

The court gave no reason for accepting the appeals, which involve a wide range of highly charged allegations: from "excessive partisan gerrymandering" and mid-decade redistricting to the dilution of minority votes. Just last year, the court ruled in a split vote that a Pennsylvania redistricting plan – though highly partisan – could not be resolved by the courts on a complaint that the process was simply too political.

Since then, the court has entered a transition, with a new chief justice on the bench and an associate justice about to be replaced.

At the very least, the announcement Monday promises to re-energize a bitter three-year struggle between Texas Democrats and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who is widely credited with engineering the redistricting strategy.

"We felt all along that there was a serious voting rights violation in the way these districts were drawn, particularly involving the black voters in Fort Worth," said former U.S. Rep. Martin Frost, whose district was largely redrawn. "I hope they'll throw the districts out."

A special two-hour hearing is scheduled for March 1. Redistricting arguments will be heard in addition to three other unrelated cases slated that day. Texas' primary is scheduled for March 7.

Republicans' gain

The current map's boundaries resulted in a gain of six House seats for Republicans and a string of lawsuits by Democrats, who charged that the map was designed solely for that purpose. The Republicans countered that the plan added a black member to the 32-person delegation.

Mr. DeLay, the Sugar Land Republican, has blamed recent political and legal problems – including his indictment in Austin on a money-laundering charge – on Democrats angry about the redistricting. His office was philosophical Monday, saying the plan has so far passed every legal hurdle.

"The Supreme Court's consideration represents the last step in the redistricting process," said his spokesman, Kevin Madden. He said the map, which aimed to clear past gerrymandering by Democrats, gained preliminary Justice Department approval and the backing of a three-judge federal panel.

Democrats were ecstatic. The court had several of the cases on its list for consideration at least five times in the past year but had declined to act. The decision to hear the cases followed by barely a week reports that the Justice Department had approved the Texas plan two years ago over the objections of staff lawyers who were concerned that the plan diluted minority voting rights.

"I don't know why the court accepted the cases, but I'm glad they did," said M. Renea Hicks, an Austin lawyer who represents the city of Austin and Travis County, both of which contend that the DeLay plan diluted votes in their highly Democratic region.

"We have never gotten any justice out of this process," said J. Gerald Hebert, an attorney representing a group of Democratic officeholders. "The Texas Legislature let us down. The Justice Department let us down. And we've certainly gotten no relief from the courts."

But while Democrats expressed surprise that the court agreed to hear the cases, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said he wasn't.

Because the cases were on appeal, he said the court would be required to rule. That they chose to hear arguments first, he said, wasn't unexpected.

"We expect the court will agree with the unanimous judgment of the three-judge federal court that the Texas redistricting plan is wholly constitutional," Mr. Abbott said.

Though the court did not articulate the specific questions it plans to consider, the four cases together include three general constitutional problems:

•Whether the politics of redistricting can be so partisan that the results are unconstitutional.

•Whether the Republican redistricting plan dilutes the power of minority voters by packing them into minority-only districts or by fragmenting them among many districts.

•Whether legislatures can redistrict more often than once every 10 years, as the Constitution suggests.

Charlie Stenholm, an Abilene Democrat who lost his House seat after 26 years because of the redistricting, said he was delighted that the court would consider whether mid-decade redistricting plans – those that do not directly follow the regular decennial census – are constitutional.

The disputed Republican plan, approved in 2003, replaced a 2001 court-drawn redistricting plan that had been based on the just-completed 2000 census. Mr. Stenholm believes that the precedent, unchecked, invites political chaos.

"I have felt for quite some time that unless the Supreme Court steps in and says states may not do what Texas did, we're going to have redistricting every two years in states all over the country as the political power structure changes," Mr. Stenholm said. "That to me has always been unconstitutional."

Ultimate impact

Politicians in two other states, Colorado and Georgia, have already indicated they will consider mid-decade redistricting if the Texas plan survives the Supreme Court challenge.

But Nathaniel Persily, a redistricting expert at the University of Pennsylvania law school, said the main goal of Democrats is to have the court issue clear guidelines for what constitutes "impermissible partisan gerrymandering."

"They want the Supreme Court to explain when partisanship becomes too much partisanship. That's the mother lode," he said.

Columbia University political scientist David Epstein said the court's decision to accept the cases might signal that the court is ready to deal with partisan redistricting in a way that it wasn't just last year.

The court's makeup

Last year, in the Pennsylvania case, the court was split in its ruling that a similar Republican redistricting plan was constitutional, even though it was the result of a highly partisan political process.

Four justices (the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas) ruled that redistricting was a process too political to be judged by a court. Four other justices (John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer) said "excessive partisanship" could and should be controlled by the courts.

Standing in the middle, Justice Anthony Kennedy said he could envision a case that might be so partisan that the court would have to intervene. And Mr. Epstein thinks the court – especially Justice Kennedy – may have decided this is that case.

If so, said Mr. Epstein, "that would be a cataclysmic revolution in the way redistricting would be done. ... It would be as if you woke up on an alien landscape."

"In the South, they already have to worry about racial issues. Now, they would have to worry about shutting out the opposition – and that's always been the idea in redistricting," Mr. Epstein said. Crafting a rule that screens out the most egregious political cases would be extremely difficult, he said.

"When you have a political operation, you expect politics to intrude," Mr. Epstein said.

Mr. Persily and others say the Texas case involves a near "perfect storm" of political factors that may be driving the court's late-blooming eagerness to hear the Texas cases. Mr. DeLay's upcoming trial on money-laundering charges and the leak of the Justice Department disagreement have underscored the Democrats' case. Even the fact that Mr. DeLay felt the need to redistrict just two years after a court-ordered plan emphasizes the uniqueness of the Texas redistricting fray.

"It gives a sense of how extraordinary the facts are in the Texas case," he said.