AUSTIN – Democrats came out winners in a court decision on redistricting that was handed down Friday.

U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-San Antonio, now must run in his hometown's heavily Democratic south side.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Austin keeps his Democratic base in Travis County, while Laredo Democrat Henry Cuellar received a district more anchored in his native Rio Grande Valley.

The ruling by a three-judge federal panel doesn't guarantee that Democrats, badly outnumbered in the state's congressional delegation by Republicans, will pick up seats this fall.

However, combined with the mounting problems of former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay – thwarted by another set of judges who refused this week to allow Republicans to replace him on the ballot – the redrawn map gives Democrats an unexpected boost.

"Democrats might pick up a seat or two in Texas and cut into the Republicans' 21-11 advantage," said Ed Sills of the Texas AFL-CIO, which generally backs Democrats.

Democrats need 15 seats nationally to regain the House. Even before this week, they were talking up their chances of gaining up to a dozen.

Democratic consultant Matt Angle said changes to the state's congressional map by three federal judges show how far overboard the GOP-controlled Legislature went when it redrew lines in 2003.

"They overreached and created a map that couldn't be sustained," said Mr. Angle, who advises Democratic congressmen who filed a challenge to the 2003 map.

But a Republican consultant, who has sharply criticized his party's handling of the redistricting case, said it's premature for Democrats to celebrate.

GOP consultant Royal Masset said Mr. Bonilla, whose sprawling South Texas district was the focus of the case, could have fared worse. As an incumbent, Mr. Masset said, Mr. Bonilla should be in good shape.

"It protects Bonilla, so I'm happy with it," he said of the plan released by the judges, which alters five congressional districts and calls for special elections this fall.

Although Mr. Bonilla's district becomes significantly more Hispanic, it's only marginally more Democratic, Mr. Masset said.

"It's not going to be that easy for someone to get traction in two months to defeat a respected incumbent," he said.

Mr. Bonilla, who has more than $2 million in his campaign war chest, said he's delighted to run in neighborhoods on San Antonio's south side, where he grew up. He is the only Hispanic Republican in the state's congressional delegation.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court approved most of the 2003 remap. But it rejected the Legislature's move to protect Mr. Bonilla by peeling away 100,000 Hispanics he represented in Laredo and replacing them with a like number of Republicans, most of them Anglo, in the Hill Country.

The high court sent the map back to Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and U.S. District Judges Lee Rosenthal of Houston and T. John Ward of Marshall. They wrote Friday that their map altered five districts because it took that many changes to cure the "aggressive map" passed by the Legislature in 2003.

The Nov. 7 primaries in the five districts are open to anyone – Republican, Democrat or otherwise. Runoffs would occur later, on a date chosen by Secretary of State Roger Williams.

The five affected districts are the 15th, now represented by Rubén Hinojosa, D-Mercedes; the 21st, now represented by Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio; the 23rd (Mr. Bonilla); the 25th (Mr. Doggett); and the 28th (Mr. Cuellar).

E-mail rtgarrett@dallasnews.com