Tom DeLay is gone, but the Supreme Court, in LULAC v. Perry, kept the redistricting map he left as a legacy mostly intact.

After the 2000 census, Texas set to work drawing news lines for congressional districts. Over the previous 30 years, Texas had changed from a conservative Democratic to a Republican state. Texas had voted for every Republican presidential nominee since 1980, elected two GOP senators, elected and reelected Gov. George W. Bush and given the GOP control of the state Senate. Democrats, however, still controlled the state House of Representatives and had held a majority of the congressional delegation throughout the 1990s, in large part because Democrats had drawn a favorable map.

With both parties having say over the post-2000 redistricting, they deadlocked. A court drew the lines for 2002, and Democrats took 17 seats to Republicans’ 15. But Republicans also took control of the state House and realized they could draw a new map to reflect their strength in Texas. With DeLay’s help as a powerful Republican member of Congress, they enacted the first legislature-driven middecade redistricting since the late 1800s. The new map led to a six-seat GOP pickup in Texas.

The six-seat gain looks big today, with Democrats scrambling to gain 15 seats and a majority. Nine seats would be much more easily reached.

The court, in an opinion written by swing vote Justice Anthony Kennedy, did not buy the argument that middecade redistricting is an inherently unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. In fact, the court hinted that, when a court draws the lines, it might be preferable for legislatures to write a new map later in the decade. So will LULAC open the door to a flood of middecade redistrictings? Probably not.

There is some talk that Democrats will try to do unto Republicans in other states as was done to them in Texas. Top candidates include Illinois, New Mexico and North Carolina, where Democrats hold the governorship and the legislature.

But there are many incentives not to redistrict. Redistricting is the ultimate opening of a can of worms. It raises partisan tensions but also touches local issues and rivalries within state legislatures. Congressional incumbents might oppose redrawing their safe districts. Some state laws forbid middecade redistricting, and others employ nonpartisan redistricting commissions. Finally, some maps might be struck down by states courts, as was Colorado’s. The Texas situation was rare: a party with great strength but long out of power in the redistricting process finally taking over.

With close majorities in the House, the national parties may press for 2008 redistrictings, but the big partisan shift of Texas will be hard to achieve elsewhere. A more troubling possibility would be if states begin frequently tweak their maps frequently to further protect their incumbents, as Georgia has done.

While upholding the middecade Texas redistricting, the court did strike down the district of Rep. Henry Bonilla (R) on Voting Rights Act grounds. Republicans had redrawn his district to make it safer, by shifting away 100,000 Hispanics. To make the district comply with the ruling, Bonilla’s district might get more competitive and the district of neighboring Rep. Henry Cuellar (D) might be changed enough to encourage yet another match-up with former Rep. Ciro Rodriguez (D). In a larger sense, this issue may presage future dilemmas for Republicans who seek to maintain their majority in an increasingly Hispanic Texas.

All in all, former Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s Texas two-step passed court muster but is not likely to be surpassed in impact or boldness by other states.

Fortier is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.