Partisan Gerrymandering Isn't The Supreme Court's Problem Anymore

[turbinetree]

Jun. 27, 2019, at 1:34 PM
By Galen Druke
Filed under Gerrymandering

The Supreme Court will not end extreme partisan gerrymandering. In a 5-4 decision along ideological lines, the court ruled Thursday that partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts cannot be limited by federal courts. Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion, writing that “what the appellees and dissent seek is an unprecedented expansion of judicial power.”

Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent was scathing. “For the first time ever, this Court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities,” she wrote in her opening sentence. She argued that imposing limits on gerrymandered districts is not beyond the scope of the court: “The partisan gerrymanders here debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside-down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people.”

The ruling almost certainly would have been different if Anthony Kennedy were still on the court. Before retiring last year, Kennedy had been the swing justice on previous gerrymandering cases. He had said that partisan gerrymandering was within the purview of the court but that the justices should hold off on ruling any particular gerrymander unconstitutional until a manageable standard for measuring gerrymandering emerged. Since he took that position in 2004, reformers had been attempting to find such a standard. Legal scholars and statisticians developed various measurements to try to win over the court, but without Kennedy, those efforts turned out to be futile.

The most obvious consequence of Thursday’s ruling is that, come the 2021 redistricting cycle, state legislatures will be free to draw maps that boldly favor one party over the other, without concern of having their maps struck down in federal court. (State courts are another matter, as we’ll get to.) That is not all that different from the status quo, as few — if any — states showed restraint in drawing partisan gerrymanders during the last redistricting process, in 2011.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/partisan-gerrymandering-isnt-the-supreme-courts-problem-anymore/

Roberts like's to RATF*CK voters basically, like he has been doing this for over 25 years...............fuck the Constitution

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. But people should be careful what they wish for - Democrats can gerrymander, too.

The court says there's no federal remedy, so everybody needs to pay attention to what's going on in their state legislatures. Most of the time nobody cares and they don't even know the names of their state representatives. That has to change. That's where the remedy is.

[turbinetree]

2. I agree....................this is why I vote, in every election............... it's the courts

[UTUSN]

3. So if Federal courts can't interfere with States on voting, Bush v. Gore should not have been heard

at all, not even with the cop out of "this case only?"

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. Bush v. Gore was the worst Supreme Court decision since Dred Scott.

It may have been since superseded in bad reasoning by Citizens United, but it was a steaming heap of disingenuous legal poo. The court never should have granted cert in the first place, but Rehnquist was the chief justice at the time - and what a lot of people seem to have forgotten is that Rehnquist was essentially Nixon's Bill Barr. He was an extreme GOP partisan who worked in Nixon's OLC and had never been a judge at all until he was appointed to the Supreme Court. He was actually much worse than any of the current justices, with the possible exception of Thomas.

[Blue_Tires]

5. The hits just keep coming...

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