SECOND INTERIM REMEDIAL ORDER
This Court’s August 6, 1996, Remedial Order directed the Texas legislature to adopt congressional redistricting legislation by June 30, 1997, to replace this Court’s 1996 interim redistricting plan. The Texas legislature subsequently failed to enact congressional redistricting legislation during the 75th Regular Session. The full House passed Plan C764 which was never acted upon by the Senate, and the Senate Committee of the WTiole. on Legislative and Congressional Redistricting passed Plan C754 which was never acted upon by the full Senate. This Court’s June 13, 1997, Order then instructed the parties to file briefs that detailed (1) the legal effect of the Texas legislature’s failure to adopt a congressional redistricting plan, and (2) the actions that this Court should take prior to the 1998 elections.
Plaintiffs urge this Court to order a “substantially reconstructed” redistricting plan based upon the congressional districts in effect in the 1980s and Texas’s traditional redistricting principles. Defendants Governor Bush, Secretary of State Garza, and Attorney General Morales take no position on what action this Court should take prior to the 1998 elections. Defendant Lieutenant Governor Bullock requests this Court to implement Plan C754 or, in the alternative, the Court’s ’ 1996 interim plan. Defendant Speaker of the House Laney requests this Court to implement Plan C764 or, in the alternative, the Court’s 1996 interim plan. Defendants also request this Court to address the issue of population deviation between congressional districts in any plan it may order into effect for the 1998 elections. The Court has carefully considered the pleadings submitted by all parties and by various amici curiae.
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Neither Plan C764 nor Plan C754 was passed by both houses of the Texas legislature and signed by the Governor. Obviously, they did not become law. This Court declines to consider either Plan C764 or Plan C754 as a valid expression of Texas’s legislative will. Because the legislature has failed to act, this Court is left with the “unwelcome obligation” of providing a congressional redistricting plan for the 1998 and millennial election cycles pending later legislative action.
Wise v. Lipscomb,
This Court’s 1996 interim congressional redistricting plan (Plan C745) corrected the basic constitutional infirmities found in Districts 18, 29, and 30.
See Vera v. Bush,
Defendants argue that we must address the issue of population deviation between districts in any plan implemented for the 1998 election and beyond. Defendants Bullock and Laney specifically urge the adoption of Plans C764 and C754 on the ground that they address only the population deviations between the districts in the Court’s 1996 interim plan. The Supreme Court stated in
Abrams v. Johnson
that “[c]ourt-ordered districts are held to higher standards of population equality than legislative ones. A court-ordered plan should ‘ordinarily achieve the goal of population equality with little more than
de minimis
variation.’ ” — U.S.-,-,
Our reticence to act on increasingly outdated census data is heightened by the impact of the Fifth Circuit’s recent decision in
Campos v. City of Houston,
Finally, the Court reminds the Texas legislature that should it choose to pass its own congressional redistricting plan subsequent to this Order, the Court “will view skeptically
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any final districting plan submitted by the state legislature that descends to districting at the census block level.”
Vera,
Accordingly, the Court
ORDERS that Texas’s congressional elections continue to take place under this Court’s 1996 interim redistricting plan (Plan C745) until the State of Texas enacts a congressional redistricting plan; and
ORDERS that the Court will retain jurisdiction over the state’s redistrieting of its congressional districts.