Fourth, the Justice Department's request is essentially a collateral attack upon the settlement that the City has reached with Hispanic plaintiffs in the pending section 2 voting rights action. To the extent the Justice Department contends that the section 2 court “lacked jurisdiction” to order the city elections to go forward in November 1991, its argument has been refuted by the revised Fifth Circuit opinion in the case.
See Campos v. City of Houston, opinion on rehearing,
968 F.2d 446 (5th Cir.1992). Because the district court had jurisdiction to order some relief before the 1991 elections, and because it maintains jurisdiction to approve a settlement that complies with the Voting Rights Act, it would be most unseemly for this coordinate court, by ordering a new election, to grant the kind of relief that the Fifth Circuit refused. This is not to say that we, as a three-judge court, lack jurisdiction to grant the relief sought by the United States. Rather, we conclude that it would be an unwise exercise of our discretion to interfere with the settlement of a bona fide, hotly contested section 2 case, which has been predicated upon the implementation of nearly the same redistricting plan that the Justice Department precleared.