{"id":36623,"date":"2012-02-13T06:29:21","date_gmt":"2012-02-13T13:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=36623"},"modified":"2012-02-13T06:29:28","modified_gmt":"2012-02-13T13:29:28","slug":"high-court-rejects-house-redistricting-plan-guv-to-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2012\/02\/high-court-rejects-house-redistricting-plan-guv-to-appeal\/","title":{"rendered":"High court rejects House redistricting plan; guv to appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The Roundhouse in Santa Fe (Photo by Heath Haussamen)<\/p><\/div>\n

The N.M. Supreme Court rejected the governor\u2019s court-approved state House redistricting plan on Friday. She plans to appeal to federal court today.<\/h4>\n

When Judge James A. Hall approved Gov. Susana Martinez\u2019s<\/a> proposal for redistricting state House seats in January, he decided that, while her plan shifted things to the right<\/a>, it did so less than the Democrats\u2019 plan shifted things to the left.<\/p>\n

So Hall chose the less-partisan plan \u2013 and one he deemed within acceptable limits.<\/p>\n

Not so, the N.M. Supreme Court ruled Friday.<\/p>\n

In a 4-1 decision, the court sent Hall back to the drawing board. My reading is that the justices effectively told Hall that, rather than choosing the least partisan plan, he should draw his own, non-partisan map of state House districts.<\/p>\n

The justices in the majority directed Hall to create a \u201cpartisan neutral\u201d map by Feb. 27. Court of Appeals Judge Jonathan Sutin wrote in dissent that Hall\u2019s plan was \u201can appropriate stopping place\u201d for the redistricting map.<\/p>\n

You can read more here<\/a> from The Associated Press. That link will also take you to the Supreme Court ruling and Sutin\u2019s dissention.<\/p>\n

Democrats were pleased.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ruling was a victory for the people of New Mexico and the principle of one person, one vote,\u201d said the party\u2019s state chairman, Javier Gonzales. \u201cIt was a rejection of Governor Martinez\u2019s partisan maps that favored the interests of her political party over those of the people of this state.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the fight will apparently continue, keeping members of the House and anyone else planning to run for those seats guessing about the makeup of districts as candidate filing day approaches next month.<\/p>\n

Martinez spokesman Scott Darnell blasted the Supreme Court for making \u201ca partisan decision that says political considerations are more important than the constitutional mandate of one-person, one-vote.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis attempts to turn the United States Constitution on its head, and the governor is confident the final redistricting map will protect the constitutional rights of New Mexicans, even if a federal court is forced to step in,\u201d Darnell said.<\/p>\n

Capitol Report New Mexico confirmed what\u2019s hinted at in that statement: Martinez will appeal to federal court<\/a> today.<\/p>\n

Onward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The N.M. Supreme Court rejected the governor\u2019s court-approved state House redistricting plan on Friday. She plans to appeal to federal court today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[161,207,107,208],"class_list":["post-36623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-judiciary","tag-redistricting","tag-roundhouse","tag-susana-martinez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}