The United States Supreme Court will hear an appeal of the Texas congressional redistricting case. The maps were redrawn in mid-decade after Republicans took control of the state Legislature; after approval from the Bush Administration and by a three-judge federal panel, they were used to elect a congressional delegation that, for the first time in modern history, features a Republican majority.This particular plan has provided Texas politics with a steady diet of drama. The Legislature couldn't agree on congressional maps in 2001 and so a panel of federal judges drew one. It gave Republicans only 15 of the 32 seats in the delegation. In 2002, Republicans took over a majority of seats in the Texas House and used that new advantage to elect Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, and then to draw new congressional maps that, when finally in place, put Republicans in 21 of the 32 Texas seats. On the way, the Legislature was blocked once when most House Democrats left the state for Ardmore, Oklahoma, to deny the House a quorum, and blocked again when 11 Senate Democrats spent a month in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to halt consideration in the upper chamber. Neither effort affected the final result: Republican legislators got a late and critical assist from U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay of Sugar Land and drew the map that's now in place. Staff lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice unanimously rejected the map, but were overruled by their bosses. A three-judge federal panel ratified that decision, and the 2004 elections gave the Republicans five more seats in the Texas delegation. Those five seats were the only net gains in the entire U.S. House that year. The groups that sued to overturn the case (all of the cases have been rolled into one) argue, variously, that the new plan illegal dilutes the voting power of minorities, that the new maps were drawn for no reason other than partisan gerrymandering, and that the drawers of new maps should have been forced to use new census data to account for growth in the state since the 2000 Census was completed. One argument was that the growth was disproportionately in minority populations who, because they weren't recounted, were cheated of their electoral clout. Both sides reacted as you might expect, with Republican officials like Rick Perry, Greg Abbott and Tom Craddick saying they're certain the court will find the current plans constitutional, and Democrats and others -- like the plaintiffs -- saying they expect the court to overturn what Texas lawmakers did back in 2003. The Supremes will hear arguments on March 1 of next year -- about a week before the Democratic and Republican primaries. And they'll probably rule -- if things follow the normal course -- before the July 4 break. Should they rule the maps illegal, as the court did in 1997, they could toss out the results of the primaries and order new congressional elections.