WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The Supreme Court on Friday ruled in a Texas political dispute, rejecting judge-drawn election maps favoring minority candidates and Democrats in the 2012 congressional and state legislature elections.
In its first ruling on political boundary-drawing based on the 2010 U.S. Census, the high court unanimously set aside the interim maps created by federal district court judges in San Antonio.
The high court said it was unclear whether the judges in Texas followed the appropriate standards and sent the cases back for further proceedings.
At issue were the maps that Texas will use in its primary contests set for April 3 that will decide party candidates for congressional and state legislature elections in November.
The dispute had been closely watched because it could help decide whether Republicans or Democrats gain as many as four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in November.
Texas Republican officials appealed to the Supreme Court, said the lower-court overstepped its authority and argued the judges should have deferred to the maps drawn by the elected lawmakers. Those maps favor Republican candidates.
The officials won at least a partial victory, though the court stopped short of adopting the maps drawn by the Republican-dominated legislature.
The Supreme Court ruled that the judges appeared to have unnecessarily ignored the state's plans in drawing certain districts and those maps can at least be used as a starting point.
"Some aspects of the district court's plans seem to pay adequate attention to the state's policies, others do not and the propriety of still others is unclear," the court held in its opinion.
Redrawing the Texas districts has been a major political and legal battle. The state's population went up by more than 20 percent, or 4.2 million people, over the past decade, with Hispanics accounting for 2.8 million of the increase.
After the 2010 Census, Texas got four new congressional seats, giving it 36. The legislature's plan, signed by Texas Governor Rick Perry, who dropped out of the Republican presidential race on Thursday, created only one new heavily Hispanic district.
The interim maps drawn by the judges in Texas were designed to remain in place until different court in Washington decided whether the Texas state plan should be approved or rejected under the federal voting rights law.
A trial in that case is underway. That case ultimately is expected to determine the final maps to be used in Texas in future years.
The Obama administration, the state Democratic Party and minority groups have challenged parts or all of the state's redistricting plan for violating the voting rights law, and said the judicially drawn one should be used on an interim basis.
The Supreme Court cases are Perry v. Perez, No 11-713; Perry v. Davis, No. 11-714, and Perry v. Perez, No. 11-715.
(Reporting By James Vicini; Editing by Doina Chiacu)
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