Texas Redistricting: Who enforces the Constitution?

This report comes from Lyle Deniston at Scotusblog.comAnalysis: Much of "DeLay map" may survive

The most telling comment by him came midway in the argument of the challengers to the Texas plan. Kennedy suggested that it would be "very dangerous" if the Court were to take away from state legislatures the authority to reopen a districting plan that was found to be excessively partisan. Leaving open the option of drawing new districts within a single decade, he said, would act as "a control mechanism," with legislators on notice that if they "over-reached" in creating partisan advantage, that could be corrected. The comment suggested that Kennedy does, indeed, think that partisanship was, potentially, a constitutional problem and that legislatures needed flexibility to deal with it. His emphasis, though, was more on a legislative corrective than a judicial one.