District Court, Splitting 2-1, Finds Texas Congressional Districts Violate VRA

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There they go again! These same judges already tried to steal districts in 2011 when they concocted a grotesque Democratic gerrymander for the Congressional districts. They were stopped before.

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Honestly the Texas GOP should probably just make a Travis County vote sink for the Dems and be done with it...it's pretty much inevitable anyway. 

I strongly expect this will be the end result of this in some fashion or another,  with the other three seats staying Dem.

That's odd. 2 of the 3 aren't Democratic now, and doing what the court did in its slapped down plan C220 would only strengthen TX-27 (renumbered TX-34 in that plan) for Farenholdt. Nueces County voted for Trump.

I am amused by liberals giving us a pretext to strengthen our districts. I would think they would learn after this backfired in North Carolina.

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Anyone have an idea as to how the new maps may look like?

Likely a total redraw of the southern part of the state, Fourth valley district would be likely.  Austin would likely also have a seat entirely in Travis county as well.  It might take out 2 or 3 republicans, depending on what they do in San Antonio. 

Maybe some rearanging of the 11 and 23.

If there's a fourth valley seat, I assume this means Farenthold's seat is dismantled, and then 15, 27, 28, and 34 are all long, tall "fajita strips"?
Yes, an Austin-anchored White district is probably going to happen. A blessing in disguise for the GOP, you can only crack it into so many pieces, and many rich, white Austin suburbanites who voted against Obama twice can't stand Trump.
With Doggett's current seat being dismantled in favor of an Austin-anchored one, I suppose this would mean a second Hispanic mostly-San Antonio seat?
Lastly, not quite sure what becomes of 23 and 11 if San Antonio. Playing around with DRA, it's hard to have 4 valley strips, 2 San Antonio seats, AND a D-leaning TX-23, but then again the numbers used are pretty old.
As for TX-26 being mentioned (I think), are they mandating a third DFW-area VRA seat, too?

The court rejected all 4 valley district plans as being noncompact and with bizarre districts similar to that of the 2006 district rejected by the Supreme Court.


The fact that the Legislature’s enacted map contains three such “fajita strip” districts does not relieve Plaintiffs of their obligation to produce evidence showing that their proposed Gingles demonstration districts are compact for § 2 purposes.9 Thus, these plans fail to demonstrate that an additional compact Latino opportunity district could be drawn in South/West Texas.

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There are plenty of large land area districts that have stretches of highway where there is nothing in between and it's unavoidable in many cases. With that said, arguing about this is a moot point, because the VRA districts are going to be mandated by law. End of debate.

We are making progress. You are no longer claiming that the district is compact, or that Nueces or Cameron belong together.

Cameron and Nueces combined are too big for a district (and you have to throw in the counties in between) by about 50k persons. They can't go together.

So, what the plaintiffs are essentially asking for is to chop Nueces County into pieces (probably along racial lines. ironic, I guess) in order to dilute the fact that is consistently votes for Republican Congressional candidates.

If you leave Nueces County intact, such district can be won by a Republican, and this is what happened in the 2010 election.