HARI SREENIVASAN, PBS NEWSHOUR WEEKEND ANCHOR:

A panel of federal judges in Texas is ordering the state of Texas to redraw the state's congressional district map, because it intentionally discriminated against Hispanic voters. The judges ruled Friday that in 2011, Republican state legislators engaged in racial gerrymandering by diluting Hispanic voting strength in two Republican-held districts and by packing Hispanic voters into a neighboring district. The ruling, and another pending case over Texas's strict photo voter ID law, raise questions about how the Justice Department and Supreme Court will handle voting rights.

Joining me now to discuss that is reporter Reid Wilson from "The Hill."

So, explain what happened in these two districts.

REID WILSON, REPORTER, "THE HILL": There's this term called "packing and cracking". And essentially what the court said that the Texas legislature did was they packed Hispanic voters into one district that centered around Austin and they cracked those voters apart in different communities. They divided similar communities in another district on the east coast of Texas and a third district that runs along the Texas-Mexico border.

So, this is all part of a pattern that Democrats say Republicans engage in in states where they control state legislatures in hopes of building more safe Republican districts and in cementing their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.