After months of legal battles and delays, Texas finally has interim redistricting maps and a primary date, but one aspect is missing—the maps' required preclearance by a U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

The D.C. court is responsible for approving the maps, but should the court decide against them, the ruling would likely come too late for the 2012 elections.

The U.S. District Court in San Antonio reached an agreement on maps with the state in February and set the primary for May 29, but other parties objected. The D.C. court is currently reviewing briefs submitted by all parties and has yet to issue a ruling.

Randall Buck Wood, election law expert and senior partner at the Austin-based law firm Ray & Wood, said while it is difficult to predict how a court is going to rule, the indication is that the D.C. court is not going to approve the maps.

"There has to be a reason why they simply have not handed down a ruling," Wood stated. "We thought for sure the three-judge panel would have ruled last week."

The main obstacle is the argument by several minority rights groups that Austin-based District 25 is a coalition district and therefore, the Congressional map violates the Voting Rights Act by reconfiguring its boundaries.

Meanwhile, the Texas Latino Redistricting Task Force has claimed that "Anglo voters dominate the Democratic primary" in District 25, so protection is not required.

There was not an official deadline for a decision, but a ruling against the maps would have been needed by the end of March to feasibly allow time to draw new ones by May 29. A delay at this point would most certainly mean pushing the primary back to late June with a runoff in September—two months before the general election.

Both Wood and Steve Bickerstaff, an adjunct law professor at The University of Texas School of Law, say they believe if the maps are rejected, the San Antonio court would decide another delay would be too disruptive to the 2012 elections and plead to make changes for the next election cycle.

"My feeling now is that no matter what the D.C. court does, we're going to use the San Antonio maps at least one time," Wood said.