The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected a Texas congressional redistricting plan drawn up by judges of a lower court there, in a ruling that would favor Republicans in November's state and national elections.
The high court unanimously ordered the lower court to redraw districts more in line with those crafted by the Republican-dominated state legislature last year in Texas.
The decision is seen as a victory for the state's Republican governor, Rick Perry, who had opposed the Texas judges' redistricting as too favorable to the state's new residents, who are mainly Hispanics and blacks, minorities who as a whole lean more Democratic than Republican.
The Supreme Court issued its decision just 11 days after oral arguments, reflecting an urgency of the dispute, which needed to be settled before a February 1 deadline for creation of new district maps.
The maps are used in elections for the Texas state legislature and the state's 36 seats in the US House of Representatives -- an increase of four lawmakers due to the Lone Star state's population growth.
Texas lawmakers redrew the districts -- a process that occurs about once a decade -- but the Obama administration complained that they were unfair to growing minority populations.
To address those concerns, the federal court in San Antonio redrew the districts, sparking a bitter legal fight, with both parties seeking advantage ahead of the November 6 election.
The Supreme Court ruled that Texas did not comply with "appropriate standards in drawing interim maps for the 2012 Texas elections," and that the judges were "somewhat ambiguous" in their redistricting and did not pay "adequate attention" to the intent of elected state officials.
The court ordered the San Antonio judges to be guided by "the state's policy judgments on where to place new districts and how to shift existing ones in response to massive population growth."
Perry, who this week withdrew from the US presidential race after a flawed campaign, has been seeking a redistricting more favorable to Republicans, who have dominated the Texas delegation of lawmakers for decades.
The redistricting has yet to be pre-approved at the federal level, as required under terms of the Voting Rights Act. But with Republican primaries in Texas set for April 3, a federal court in Washington must decide soon on the new redistricting plans that the San Antonio court has been ordered to present.
