Top Court Rules States Free to Redistrict

Front of the U.S. Supreme Court building. The Court on Wednesday, June 28, 2006, upheld most of the Texas congressional map engineered by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay but threw out part, saying some of the new boundaries failed to protect minority voting rights. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) (Manuel Balce Ceneta - AP)

The ruling that the rights of Hispanic voters had been violated revolved around a newly created district near Laredo, drawn to protect the political future of Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla.

Kennedy ruled that the impact was to deny Hispanic voters the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choosing in south and west Texas.

The plan's "troubling blend of politics and race _ and the resulting vote dilution of a group that was beginning to achieve (a) goal of overcoming prior electoral discrimination _ cannot be sustained," he wrote.

Chief Justice John Roberts, participating in his first major voting rights case, rejected that. "The state has drawn a redistricting plan that provides six of seven congressional districts with an effective majority of Latino voting-age citizens in south and west Texas, and it is not possible to provide more," he said.

Kennedy reached the opposite conclusion with respect to black voters in an area around Fort Worth. Rep. Martin Frost, the area's former Democratic congressman, is white, and Kennedy wrote that since there had been no competitive primary for 20 years, "no obvious benchmark exists for deciding whether African-Americans could elect their candidate of choice."

"The fact that African-Americans voted for Frost _ in the primary and general elections _ could signify he is their candidate of choice," Kennedy wrote.

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Associated Press writer Gina Holland contributed to this report.