Late this morning, the three judge federal panel in Mississippi’s redistricting lawsuit has ordered that the Legislature should run in its current districts for 2011. While some Democrat blogs are doing a victory dance, politically, this is a win for Phil Bryant and the Republican party. They are the ones that stepped in the breach to keep a bad deal from happening.
Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann eventually swayed the court’s opinion with his argument that the redistricting process was (1) not finished and (2) wasn’t being allowed to finish.
The Democratic Party and others ask us to adopt as an interim remedy the respective plans passed this year by the House and the Senate, but not adopted by the full Legislature. The Republican Party and others agree that a remedy for malapportionment should be imposed, but they ask us to appoint an expert to draw a new plan, or to use the new plan that they have proposed. Third, the Secretary of State and others assert that it is premature for this Court to impose any remedy, because neither the Mississippi Constitution nor the United States Constitution requires the Legislature to reapportion itself until next year. We agree with the Secretary of State’s position that imposition of a remedy is premature and allow the 2011 legislative elections to proceed under the present districts.
My personal belief is that this is the final straw that will prevent Billy McCoy from running again.
More to come on this, but here’s the order (courtesy of CottonMouth).
Magnolia Tribune
