1006
Stevens, J., dissenting
It was not easy for the State to achieve these results while simultaneously guaranteeing that each district enclosed the residence of its incumbent, contained the same number of people, and complied with other federal and state districting requirements. Much of Dallas and Houston, for example, was already represented in Congress by Democrats, and creating new Democratic districts in each city while ensuring politically safe seats for sitting Representatives required significant political gerrymandering. This task was aided by technological and informational advances that allowed the State to adjust lines on the scale of city blocks, thereby guaranteeing twists and turns that would have been essentially impossible in any earlier redistricting.5 "[T]he result of the Legislature's efforts," the District Court concluded, was "a
F. Supp., at 1313; Politics in America 1994: The 103rd Congress 1536 (1993) ("This is the District Eddie Bernice Johnson drew"). Vice chair of the same committee, Frank Tejeda, also "attempted to draw a district [District 28] that would facilitate his potential candidacy." 861 F. Supp., at 1326. And State Senator Gene Green and State Representative Roman Martinez, both Houston-area officials with designs on Congress, competed in an effort to design District 29 in a way that would guarantee their own election. Id., at 1324, n. 27. (Martinez later dropped out of the congressional race to run for State Senate.) Because the role that these legislators played in the redistricting process was largely identical to that played by sitting incumbents, my references to the role of "incumbents" in the redistricting process generally refer to these individuals as well.
5 As did many other States, Texas kept track of the shapes of its post-1990 districts with a computer districting program loaded with 1990 census information and geographic information at scales ranging from statewide to that of a city block. See generally Shaw v. Hunt, 861 F. Supp. 408, 457 (EDNC 1994) (describing computer programs); 861 F. Supp., at 1318-1319. The dramatic increase in bizarrely shaped districts after 1990 can be traced, at least in part, to the fact that computers allowed legislators to achieve their political goals geographically in a manner far more precise than heretofore possible. See Pildes & Niemi, Expressive Harms, "Bizarre Districts," and Voting Rights: Evaluating Election-District Appearances After Shaw v. Reno, 92 Mich. L. Rev. 483, 574 (1993); Note, The Illegitimacy of the Incumbent Gerrymander, 74 Texas L. Rev. 913, 924 (1996).
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