With the controller:

class TransactionImportsController < ApplicationController
  def create
    redirect_to transaction_imports_url
  end
end

and the request spec:

describe "TransactionImports" do
  it "should fail" do
    get '/transaction_imports/new'
    post '/transaction_imports' # rendered template is still "new" here!
     response.should redirect_to(transaction_imports_url)
     response.should render_template('new')
   end
end

The spec is passing (it checks logically opposite results).
The reason is that there are 2 requests (get and post). Obviously the result of post preserves the result of the previous get.

I might be missing something, but I suppose it should not be the case in integration test - each response/request should not be in any way related to the others (except the session and cookies).

I also might be doing something wrong of course :)

Using rspec 2.0.0.