Michael Li explains it all to you.
In one-line orders today (here and here), the Supreme Court rejected a request by plaintiffs in the Texas redistricting case that the Supreme Court expedite appeals by the State of Texas.
The plaintiffs’ requests would have sped up the cases by having the parties forgo the filing of jurisdiction statements (essentially skipping one step in the process) and setting an expedited briefing schedule. This would have allowed the high court to consider whether to take the cases at its January 5, 2018 conference.
The denial of the plaintiffs’ requests means that Texas will have until October 17 and 27 to file jurisdiction statements on the congressional and state house rulings respectively. The plaintiffs then will have up to 30 days to ask the court to dismiss the appeals or summarily affirm (though they could file early to try to expedite the timeline). The state then will have 14 days to file a reply.
See here for the background. As Li notes, in addition to the state’s appeal of the order that new maps be drawn, the plaintiffs have their own appeal of issues where they lost in court as well. There are many filings to be made, and the state has no incentive to be prompt about any of theirs. As such, while everything could be teed up for the Court in January, it’s unlikely that will happen. So settle in, this will once again take awhile. The Statesman has more.