AUSTIN (Legal Newsline) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Feb. 26 that he will challenge a lower court ruling that invalidates two of Texas’ 36 congressional districts (27 and 35) and nine state Houston districts.
To challenge the ruling, Paxton’s office filed a brief in a congressional redistricting case that is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. The court will hear oral arguments April 24 for the case. Initially, a pair of lower court rulings had invalidated districts drawn by a federal three judge panel. The Supreme Court blocked the invalidation from going into effect until it can examine the issue.
“In 2012, at the Supreme Court’s direction, the federal district court in San Antonio drew the redistricting maps. Those maps were adopted by the [Texas] Legislature in 2013 and used in the last three election cycles,” Paxton said in a statement. “Now we are seeing yet another attempt by unelected federal judges to override the judgment of Texas voters. The lower court’s decisions to invalidate parts of the maps it drew and adopted defy law and logic and cannot be sustained.”
