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True or false?

You must be a resident of a state in order to run for Congress to represent that state.

False.

So said a three-judge panel of the the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals,  rejecting an attempt by Texas Republicans to take former Congressman Tom DeLay's name off the ballot in the November election.  The only residency requirement that counts, the court said, is the one in the U.S. Constitution, which says that a candidate for Congress must be "when elected" an inhabitant of the state the candidate seeks to represent.

DeLay announced in April that he was resigning from Congress and would no longer seek re-election.  He then moved to Virginia.

It may well be true, today's ruling says, that DeLay was no longer a resident of Texas when the party declared him unqualified for office. But even if he was a resident of Virginia in June, when the party moved to get him off the ballot, that doesn't mean he always will be. The records DeLay produced to show he lived in Virginia "did not conclusively establish whether he will inhabit Texas on election day." A candidate can always move before the election, the judges said.

The court noted that a similar dispute arose in 1808, involving a congressman elected to Maryland who moved to the state a mere two weeks before the election. That was found to be good enough to qualify.  There is, the court said today, simply no pre-election residency requirement.

The three judges were unanimous. Among them was Edith Brown Clement, who some Republicans had hoped might be a potential Bush Supreme Court nominee.

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