A federal three-judge panel in San Antonio ruled on Friday that the November elections in Texas would proceed, ending uncertainty about whether a Washington court's earlier ruling would delay the elections.
Earlier, the court in Washington struck down electoral redistricting maps passed by the Republican-dominated State Legislature, finding that they discriminated against minorities.
One of the minority groups that sued Texas over the maps asked the judges to redraw part of the Congressional district map and to set a new election schedule.
But on Friday, the San Antonio judges determined that the interim redistricting maps that they created would be used. A lawyer for the group, the League of United Latin American Citizens, had argued that the interim Congressional maps were discriminatory because they were based in part on the state's original maps.
The judges appeared reluctant to disrupt the elections, and they heard testimony from an elections administrator in Bexar County, where San Antonio is located, who said that any change to the electoral maps two months before Election Day would pose logistical problems and jeopardize her ability to meet the Sept. 22 deadline for mailing ballots to overseas military voters.
