The U.S. Supreme Court was surely correct last month when it unanimously overturned the Texas electoral maps a San Antonio federal district court drew because that court did not use the “appropriate standards” in drawing them. The Court explained that, regardless of the legal ambiguities and other challenges the lower court faced, it still had to use the maps enacted by the state Legislature as a starting point and only depart from them in redrawing districts that could violate the Voting Rights Act or the Constitution.
Fair enough, but this reasonable-sounding decision belies larger issues: The Voting Rights Act has served its purpose but is now outmoded and unworkable — and is thus itself now unconstitutional.
