Another redistricting case to watch.

A Panel of three federal judges in Georgia tossed out the state's legislative district maps in early February, ruling that they violated the one person, one vote requirement of the U.S. Constitution.

Georgia's attorney general is appealing the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Georgia legislators scrambled to meet a court imposed deadline of March 1 to enact new plans. Any new, state-drawn plan must pass muster with the U.S. Department of Justice, as required by the federal Voting Rights Act, before it can be used for Georgia's July 20 primary elections.

If the Supreme Court upholds the lower court decision in Larios vs. Cox, it would change the way states draw legislative lines. The decision is the first federal ruling where a legislative map with an overall population deviation of less than 10 percent was found invalid based on the one person, one vote requirement. Many states mistakenly assumed that 10 percent was a safe harbor from adverse court action. The overall population deviation is the combined percentage that the smallest district and the largest district populations deviate from the ideal district size.

The Georgia ruling emphasized that any substantial departure from population equality must be to meet traditional redistricting criteria, such as preserving local government boundaries or drawing compact districts. The court said that preserving districts in rural south Georgia by underpopulating them at the expense of districts in the rapidly growing overpopulated Atlanta suburbs was impermissible. Thirty states have legislative plans that are close to an overall deviation of 10 percent that might be jeopardized under this new decision. However, most of those states can probably show that a 10 percent deviation was needed to further a rational state objective--something Georgia was unable to do.

Including Georgia, nine states are still embroiled in redistricting litigation. That list includes Arizona where a state court threw out the legislative plans drawn by a commission because they were not competitive enough as required by the Arizona Constitution. A ruling in a Pennsylvania case by the U.S. Supreme Court on whether states can continue partisan gerrymandering could come any day and has the potential to dramatically change redistricting rules. Many observers who attended the high court's oral arguments in the case expressed skepticism that the Court was prepared to rein in political gerrymandering, but no one knows until an opinion is handed down.