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U.S. Supreme Court lets congressional maps stand in Texas, North Carolina
Rulings may leave current maps will be in place until after reapportionment in 2021
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
WASHINGTON (CFP) — Republican legislators in Texas and North Carolina have both dodged a bullet after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to invalidate congressional maps in both states that lower courts had struck down as illegally gerrymandered.
In the Texas case, the justices rejected a claim that state legislators impermissibly used race to draw electoral maps. In the North Carolina case, they vacated a lower court decision holding that the state’s map unconstitutionally diluted the voting strength of Democrats and ordered the case to be reconsidered.
The high court’s June 25 decisions mean that neither state is likely to face a court-ordered redraw in this election cycle. And while the North Carolina case could be reconsidered for the 2020 election, the ruling in the Texas case likely means that the current map will be used until after new maps are drawn in 2021, based on the results of the 2020 census.
In their decison in the Texas case, the justices ruled 5-to-4 that a lower court erred in finding back in 2017 that a congressional map and state House maps adopted in 2013 should be struck down because they were impermissibly drawn using racial considerations. The Supreme Court had put that ruling on hold while it considered the state’s appeal.
The two congressional districts involved in the lawsuit were the 27th District, which stretches along the Gulf Coast from Corpus Christi toward Houston, and the 35th District, which covers parts of Austin and San Antonio linked by a narrow strip of land.
The lower court’s objection to the 27th District was the GOP-controlled legislature reduced the Latino population from 70 percent to around 50 percent. The objection to the 35 District was that legislators used race to create a district that is more than 70 percent Latino and African American, reducing minority populations in surrounding districts.
The 27th District, currently vacant, has been held by Republicans since it was redrawn. U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a white Democrat from Austin, represents the 35th District.
In his majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito said the evidence offered by the plaintiffs “is plainly insufficient to prove that the 2013 Legislature acted in bad faith and engaged in intentional discrimination.” The justices did uphold a ruling that a Texas House district in Fort Worth was an impermissible racial gerrymander.
But in her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the court’s decision means minority voters in Texas “will continue to be underrepresented in the political process.”
“Those voters must return to the polls in 2018 and 2020 with the knowledge that their ability to exercise meaningfully their right to vote has been burdened by the manipulation of district lines specifically designed to target their communities and minimize their political will,” she wrote.
In the North Carolina case, the justices vacated a 2018 ruling by a three-judge panel that the congressional map adopted by Republican legislators in 2016 was unconstitutional because it diluted the voting strength of Democrats — the first time that a federal court had ever struck down a congressional map on the grounds of political, rather than racial, gerrymandering.
The Supreme Court had also put that ruling on hold while it considered an appeal.
The Tar Heel State’s map had been redrawn in 2016 after a previous map had been struck down for improperly using racial considerations. GOP lawmakers freely admitted that they were drawing lines to maximize the number of Republican-friendly seats, which the lower court found was evidence of unconstitutional partisan taint.
The Supreme Court sent the case back to North Carolina to be reconsidered in light of a ruling earlier this year in case involving a partisan gerrymander in Wisconsin. In that case, the high court sidestepped the question of whether drawing maps that favor one party over another can be found unconstitutional, returning the case to a lower court on narrow jurisdictional grounds.
The court’s order did not indicate how, or if, justices were split on the merits of the case.
While North Carolina is divided fairly evenly in presidential races and has a Democratic governor, Republicans hold a commanding 10-to-3 margin in the U.S. House delegation.
Texas, which leans more Republican, has 24 Republicans and 11 Democrats in its delegation, with one seat vacant.
Texas U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold promises to repay taxpayer money used to settle sexual harassment suit
Report: Former spokeswoman who accused Farenthold of creating a hostile work environment received $84,000
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (CFP) — U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold of Texas says he will take out a personal loan to repay $84,000 in taxpayer dollars used to settle a claim with a former staffer who sued him for sexual harassment, even though he continues to deny the underlying allegations and insists he only used tax dollars because he was required to do so.

U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas
“I want to be clear that I didn’t do anything wrong, but I also don’t want the taxpayers to be on the hook for this,” Farenthold told Corpus Christi TV station KRIS.
In 2014, Farenthold’s former communications director, Lauren Greene, sued him for gender discrimination, sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment, alleging that she was fired after complaining about sexually suggestive comments made to her by the congressman and another male staffer.
The Office of Congressional Ethics cleared Farenthold, and he reached a mediated out-of-court settlement with Greene in 2015. He was re-elected in 2016 after the charges and the settlement had been publicly disclosed.
However, the settlement came under renewed scrutiny after Politico reported on December 1 that the money paid to Greene came from the Office of Compliance, a federal agency that handles sexual harassment complaints by congressional staffers.
Farenthold had initially issued a statement saying he couldn’t comment on the settlement because of a confidentiality agreement, but he later told KRIS that he believed he was required to pay Greene with Office of Compliance money, although he now says he will “hand a check” to House Speaker Paul Ryan to reimburse the government.
Farenthold, 55, was elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010 to represent the 27th District, which sprawls across the Texas Gulf Coast between Corpus Christi and Houston. OpenSecrets.org, which tracks the financial assets of members of Congress based on their financial disclosure reports, estimated Farenthold’s net worth at $6 million in 2016.
The revelations about Farenthold have been an unwelcome distraction for House Republicans, who have been pressing for the resignation of Democratic U.S. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan for settling a sexual harassment lawsuit with money taken out of his House office budget.
Even before the details surrounding the details of Farenthold’s settlement came to light, he was already being challenged in the GOP primary by Michael Cloud, the Republican chairman in Victoria County. After the Politico story was published, Bech Bruun, chairman of the Texas Water Development Board, told the Texas Tribune that he was also considering challenging Farenthold and that “it is a sad day when an elected official uses taxpayer money to settle a claim of sexual harassment.”
Texas’s unusually early March primary means that the filing deadline for party primaries is December 11. In addition, the 27th is one of three Texas U.S. House districts struck down in March by a panel of federal judges for improper gerrymandering of Latino voters, which could result in changes being made to the district before next year’s congressional elections.