Texas House Districts 2012 Estimates

[jimrtex]

The Texas Constitution primarily deals with apportionment of representatives, rather than the actual creation of districts.  Based on the 2012 estimates, the ideal district population for the 150 house districts is 173,728, an increase of 3.6% from the 167,637 for the 2010 census.

The Texas Constitution provides for three types of districts:

(a) Multi-member districts for single counties, which are apportioned one representative for each multiple of 173,728.  Strictly speaking, the number of districts apportioned to a county is truncated: number_districts = floor(county_population /ideal_district_size), with the remainder treated as a surplus which may be included in the apportionment of a multi-county district.  In practice, if the average district size for the county is within 5% of the ideal, then the number is rounded: that is if,  number_districts = round(county_population/ideal_district_size), and

   0.95 < (county_population / number_districts) / ideal_district_size < 1.05

and it is treated as if there is no surplus.  In actuality, a total deviation of 10.0% is used.  In 'White v Regester', the SCOTUS approved a Texas house plan that had a deviation from 5.8% to -4.1%, overturning a district court decision that the deviation was too great ('White v Regester' also concerned use of multi-member districts, in which the SCOTUS upheld the lower court decision).

In its decision, the SCOTUS noted that the average absolute deviation was 1.82%, and only 23 districts, all single member, had absolute deviations greater than 3.0%.  The plan considered by the court was a hybrid plan, with 67 single member districts in smaller counties, 11 multi-member districts in larger counties, and 23 single-member districts in Harris County (Harris County was the only large county that was divided.

The map at issue in 'Smith v Regester' did not really conform to modern (post-1980) understanding of how to harmonize the Texas Constitution and equal protection under the 14th Amendment (post 'Reynolds v. Sims').  

After 'Reynolds v Sims', courts in Texas outlawed use of floterial districts, as well as a specific provision that discriminated against the largest counties.  In 'Kilgarlin v Hill', the SCOTUS determined that a Texas house plan that had deviation from +14.84% to 11.64% (26.48% total), and had 12 single member districts with a deviation greater than 10%, and 8 multimember districts that would elect 55 members would have a deviation greater than 6% violated equal protection.

Litigation elsewhere led to a conclusion that the Texas constitution should (or could) largely be ignored in drawing legislative district boundaries.