Colorado Redistricting: Supreme Court Rejects New House, Senate District Maps (UPDATE)

On Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court rejected the newly drawn House and Senate redistricting maps that were designed to make legislative races more competitive, saying that the new map was not "sufficiently attentive to county boundaries," 9News reports.

UPDATE:

On November 29th, The Colorado Reapportionment Commission approved new state House and Senate maps, which will be sent to the Colorado Supreme Court for approval before Dec. 6. According to the Denver Post, the Democratic-drawn maps were approved by a vote of 6-5.

EARLIER:

The Denver Post reports that the court's 4-2 vote sends the maps back to the Colorado Reapportionment Commission which must draw new maps and resubmit by Dec. 6.

Democrats currently control the Senate and Republcans control the House, the rejected maps would have made a third of state Legislature races competitive in 2012, CBS Denver reports.

Republicans, who were highly critical of the map, praised the decision, Fox31 reports. GOP Chairman Ryan Call said:

The State Supreme Court's decision today validates what Colorado Republicans have been arguing all along -- that the Reapportionment Commission must first look to keeping counties boundaries whole before looking to non-constitutional criteria in drawing district boundaries.

It wasn't all bad news for Colorado Democrats, The Denver Post reports that court did rule that "other nonconstitutional considerations, such as the competitiveness of a district, are not per se illegal or improper." And Colorado Democratic chairman Rick Palacio told the Post that the Democrats had concerns about the maps as well and remained confident that they can address the issues the court has with the maps.

Legislative boundaries are redrawn every 10 years to accurately reflect changes in population.

Photo via Flickr, yosoynuts