Hans Von Spakovsky - Senior Legal Fellow, Heritage Foundation Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, we're trying to drag around some of our lines
here in Texas, and the Democrats, of course, they have
taken off for parts well I was gonna say parts unknown,
but we kind of have an idea where they are
at this point in time, by the way, an hour
from now Attorney General Ken Paxson, And the question I
have for him is where where is all the action
that we were promised? Where where is the you know,

(00:23):
the loss of committee membership or vice chairs of committee.
Where's all the where's all the fines? Where's all the
things that were promised by Governor Abbott. As far as
you know, getting these Democrats back into Texas and back
at their seats, I'm not seeing it anyway. I digress.
Let's talk about the Supreme Court case. There's one involving Louisiana,

(00:45):
and it may have an impact not just on Texas,
but it will certainly have an impact in any state
that's looking at redistricting and redrawing their lines, because there's
a lot of states that have used race as a
consideration for drawing the lines. And the Supreme Court's going
to be making a ruling in this case in Louisiana,
they could impact that. Hans van Spakowski, I saw a
story that you're involved with on the Federals for this

(01:07):
tell us, tell us what is up for grabs here
in Louisiana and how that may impact other states.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Well, the Louisiana case is really interesting because it was
actually up before the Supreme Court in their in their
term that ended in June, and rather than issuing a
decision that something's pretty rare, they said, we want to
hear arguments again in this case. So we're delaying the
case until the fall when they start up again, and

(01:34):
we particularly want to hear briefing on the issue of
when is it appropriate not appropriate to use race as
a factor in drawing new lines. And what happened to
Louisiana basically was that, uh, a federal court said to them, Hey,
you want to got one congressional district that's a black

(01:55):
majority district, you have to draw up a second one.
And the legislature did that, and then some white voters
sued and said, well, wait a minute, you use race
as your primary factor in drawing up those lines. That's
that's a violation of equal protection, you know, the one person,

(02:16):
one vote standard. And a court agreed with them. So
the legislature was faced with two different federal courts telling
them the exact opposite. And that's what the Supreme Court's
got to resolve. And I suspect they're going to come
out and say, using race as a factor the way
it was used Louisiana, that's unconstitutional. And listen, Texas has

(02:40):
has that problem.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
You know what.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Hasn't been mentioned Jimmy and all of these news reports
about what's going on in Texas is that, you know,
the Justice Department sent a warning letter to Texas about
a month ago over the fact that four of the
congressional districts in Texas were drawn using race basically as

(03:05):
the primary factor. That these were Democrats wanted them, They
wanted them drawn up to favor them. And those four districts,
according to actually a fifth Circuit Us Cord of ap
Fields decisions from last year are unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. So
this redistricting isn't being done because Donald Trump is telling

(03:27):
the GOP, oh, you should do this. It's being done
to fix those four unconstitutional congressional districts.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Well, that's a great point to make, and I have
to wonder too, Hans fans Lekowski, how many other states
are going to be put in a position where they're
going to have to redraw their maps based on that criteria.
If the Supreme Court decides you cannot draw any districts
based on race, Oh, there.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Are a lot of them. I mean that Fifth Circuit
decision alone. Remember the Fifth Circuit covers that quarter of
Appeals covers Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. So those states alone
would be covered by that Fifth Circuit decision. And if
the US Supreme Court comes down the way I think
they may come down, there are congressional districts throughout the country,

(04:15):
and particularly in the southeast and southwest, it may have.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
To be redrawn. Wow, it's going to be interesting. Thank you, sir,
appreciate your time. Hans von Spakowski, Senior legal Fellow at
the Heritage Foundation at six twenty seven