Law [Partisan Gerrymandering News] Florida appeals court reverses ruling on DeSantis’s congressional maps

[Andy Capp]

Its almost as if republicans became ultra skilled in benefitting from gerrymandering as a defense for the every increasing black and latino voting blocks of the democrats. The dems will continue to win the popular vote while the repubs control the majority of districts. Lol

LOL? GFY

 

[Arkain2K]

Gerrymandering is a fucking blight. Why is our current political climate so toxic? Might having something to do with an unprecedented ability for politicians to choose their constituents.

I also blame it on indifference citizens, who generally don't give a shit about their own community until the mild illness became a chronic disease.

Plenty of people I know are more concerned with shit happening thousands of miles away in Washington that wouldn't affect their lives one bit, and completely ignore the shit happening in their own city/state that's directly screwing them over.

 

[AnGrYcRoW]

I'm against gerrymandering, but Democrats do it, too.

It's also funny to see this instant movement marshaled to rid ourselves of the Electoral College (that's what we're really talking about) when liberals were gleefully reveling in its projected boon to Hillary's delegate vote in relation to the popular vote in all the major polls over the campaign trail. Meanwhile, Trump supporters hated it and talked about how unfair it was. Then, election night comes, and beliefs flipped overnight.

Root your beliefs in principles rather than results, and I'll come along, but I expect to see you crying bloody murder when there is gerrymandering by the Democrats such as there has been in California. Principles, not results.

Your memory is too short , this came up after 2000 when Bush won the electoral college but lost the popular vote

 

[Arkain2K]

States introduce bills to counter gerrymandering
By David A. Lieb | Feb. 25, 2018​

Responding to complaints about partisan gerrymandering, a significant number of states this year are considering changing the criteria used to draw congressional and state legislative districts or shifting the task from elected officials to citizen commissions.

The proposals, being advanced both as ballot initiatives and legislation, are part of a larger battle between the political parties to best position themselves for the aftermath of the 2020 Census, when over 400 U.S. House districts and nearly 7,400 state legislative districts will be redrawn.

Since the start of this year, more than 60 bills dealing with redistricting criteria and methods have been introduced in at least 18 state legislatures, already equaling the total number of states that considered bills last year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The Ohio Legislature already has placed a redistricting measure on the state’s primary ballot in May. Citizen efforts are underway to get redistricting measures on the November ballot in a half-dozen other states, which would mark the greatest number of such initiatives in decades.

Supporters already have submitted thousands of petition signatures in Michigan and South Dakota. Petitions are currently being circulated in Missouri and Utah. Colorado has two groups working on potential ballot initiatives. And an Arkansas attorney launched an initiative effort this past week.

“The basic bottom line is people want fairness, and they want balanced government,” said Chuck Parkinson, a retired congressional staffer and customs official under Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Parkinson is chairman of a group pushing a South Dakota ballot measure to remove legislative redistricting from the hands of lawmakers and create a nine-member redistricting commission.

Although many redistricting proposals tout at least some bipartisan support, progressive activists and Democratic-aligned donors have helped fuel some of this year’s measures.

In South Dakota, where voters defeated a similar measure in 2016, the second attempt listed just four donors as of the start of this year – former Democratic U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson, who gave $50,000, and three unions that contributed a combined $18,500.

The top donor to Utah’s redistricting initiative through the end of last year was former Democratic gubernatorial nominee Michael Weinholtz, who had given $200,000.

The president of the Michigan redistricting initiative was a supporter of Democrat Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign, and the spokesman for Missouri’s initiative is a Democratic consultant.

The Missouri measure requiring a nonpartisan demographer to draw districts has taken in more than 16,000 individual donations of $25 or less, but much of the campaign’s money has come from groups aligned with Democrats. That includes about $800,000 from unions and $250,000 from an organization founded by billionaire liberal philanthropist George Soros.

Matt Walter, president of the Republican State Leadership Committee, contends the initiatives are merely “politics wrapped in some sort of illusion of citizen-participated good government.”

“What we’re seeing here right now is an organized, orchestrated effort by the progressive left to rig the system to their advantage,” Walter said.

Democrats say it’s just the opposite — that Republicans rigged the system after the 2010 Census to expand the party’s grip on political power and are trying to hold onto it. They often cite North Carolina, which has been subject to multiple lawsuits over how the GOP redrew the political boundaries. Democrats have a voter registration edge over Republicans in the state, yet Republicans legislators drew congressional districts in a way that gave them a 10-3 edge in U.S. House seats.

Across the country, Republicans currently control 33 governorships and about two-thirds of all legislative chambers. Democrats contend they want redistricting processes that are fair to voters, no matter which party is in power.

One of Democrats’ top targets has been Pennsylvania, where the state Supreme Court redrew congressional districts this past week after ruling that the 2011 boundaries drawn by the GOP-led Legislature were unconstitutionally gerrymandered. Statistical voting models of the court’s new plan show Democrats could significantly cut into the GOP’s 13-5 seat advantage in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule later this year on cases alleging illegal partisan gerrymandering by Republicans in Wisconsin and by Democrats in Maryland.

An AP analysis of 2016 election data found four times as many states with Republican-skewed state House or Assembly districts than Democratic ones, based on a statistical formula cited in recent court cases. Among the two dozen most populated states that determine the vast majority of Congress, there were nearly three times as many with Republican-tilted U.S. House districts.

Democrats have since made redistricting a bigger priority. Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is heading the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which is targeting or watching governors’ races, legislative elections and ballot issues in about 20 states.

Democrats want to end or diminish the legislature’s role in redistricting in several Republican-led states and shift those duties to independent or bipartisan commissions, similar to the processes in place in Arizona and California. The roles are reversed in Maryland, where Republican Gov. Larry Hogan is proposing an independent redistricting commission in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1 and have long controlled the redistricting process.

“By and large, if a commission draws the map, it is going to be a more fair, less political, less-partisan-driven map, and that’s a good thing,” said Kelly Ward, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

But Republicans contend that even independent commissions typically are filled by people with partisan preferences.

Arizona’s Republican legislative leaders have advanced a proposed constitutional amendment to give lawmakers greater say in appointing the state’s redistricting commission.

A compromise plan placed on the ballot by Ohio’s Republican-led Legislature would continue to give lawmakers the primary responsibility of congressional redistricting but would limit partisan gerrymandering by requiring a significant percentage of “yes” votes from the minority party to approve a 10-year map.

In Indiana, the Republican-led Senate voted along party lines last month to defeat a Democratic amendment that would have created a commission to recommend congressional and legislative districts. The Senate instead passed a bill setting criteria for lawmakers to consider. That bill is now in the House.

Indiana state Sen. Greg Walker, a Republican who sponsored the pending measure, said he hopes to eventually incorporate statistical analyses of partisan advantages into the Legislature’s redistricting procedures.

“If we can demonstrate that we have made a good faith effort to not eliminate political bias 100 percent but certainly minimize it ... ultimately I don’t think it matters who draws the maps, because the process will fine-tune itself,” Walker said.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/n...rymandering-districts-state-reform/110838870/

 

[Arkain2K]

Supreme Court refuses to stop new congressional maps in Pennsylvania
By Robert Barnes | March 19, 2018

The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a request from Republican legislative leaders in Pennsylvania to block a redrawn congressional map that creates more parity between the political parties in the state.

The practical impact is the 2018 elections are likely to be held under a map much more favorable to Democrats, who scored an apparent victory last week in a special election in a strongly Republican congressional district. The 2011 map that has been used this decade has resulted in Republicans consistently winning 13 of the state’s 18 congressional seats.

Monday’s action was the second time that the court declined to get involved in the partisan battle that has roiled Pennsylvania politics. The commonwealth’s highest court earlier this year ruled that a map drawn by Republican leaders in 2011 “clearly, plainly and palpably” violated the free-and-equal-elections clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court deliberated nearly two weeks before turning down the request to stop the map from being used in this fall’s elections. Generally the justices stay out of the way when a state’s highest court is interpreting its own state constitution.

The action came shortly after a three-judge federal panel also turned down a separate attempt by Republican legislators and members of Congress to stop implementation of the map.

The Supreme Court gave no reasoning in its one-sentence order, only that it was considered by all nine justices. There were no noted dissents.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) praised the courts.

“I applaud these decisions that will allow the upcoming election to move forward with the new and fair congressional maps,” Wolf said in a statement. “The people of Pennsylvania are tired of gerrymandering and the new map corrects past mistakes that created unfair congressional districts and attempted to diminish the impact of citizens’ votes.”

Under the map drawn by a nonpartisan expert and adopted by Democratic justices of Pennsylvania’s elected Supreme Court, analysts say Republicans start with an edge in 10 of the 18 districts. Pennsylvania, traditionally a purple state, has a legislature controlled by Republicans, a Democratic governor and a U.S. senator from each party.

Candidates face a Tuesday deadline to qualify to run for the redrawn seats.

The redrawing is extensive. For instance, the 18th Congressional District was in the national spotlight last week, when Democrat Conor Lamb appeared to come out ahead against Republican Rick Saccone. But the district is split four ways under the new plan.

Political analysts say the changes in Pennsylvania might aid national Democrats in their attempt to flip the House from Republican control. Democrats need to take about two dozen seats to win the majority, and Pennsylvania could provide some of that total. Six incumbents, five of them Republicans, have said they will not be on the fall ballot.

Pennsylvania’s top Republicans have fought the imposition of a new plan since the state Supreme Court ruled. They have received encouragement from President Trump, who tweeted last month that they should challenge the new map “all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary.”

“Your Original was correct!” Trump tweeted. “Don’t let the Dems take elections away from you so that they can raise taxes & waste money!”

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. turned down the state’s first request Feb. 5, after the state Supreme Court ordered a new map.

After the map was adopted, the legislative leaders were back, renewing their plea that the Pennsylvania justices were taking away the power that rightfully belongs to the state legislature to draw congressional lines.

“The Pennsylvania Supreme Court conspicuously seized the redistricting process and prevented any meaningful ability for the legislature to enact a remedial map to ensure a court-drawn map,” said state House Speaker Michael C. Turzai (R) and Senate President Pro Tempore Joseph B. Scarnati III (R).

But those who challenged the 2011 map as an improper partisan gerrymander said the GOP lawmakers were making arguments the U.S. Supreme Court already has rejected.

“Their latest stay application is just another ploy to preserve congressional districts that violate Pennsylvania’s Constitution for one more election cycle,” said a brief for the League of Women Voters, adding, “It would be unprecedented for this Court to interfere with the state court’s determination about its own state’s law.”

The challengers pointed out that qualifying has already begun under the new map and that “at least 150 candidates in all 18 new districts have begun collecting voter signatures on nomination petitions” for May 15 primaries.

Pennsylvania election officials have said changing the process again would require postponing the primaries and could cost the commonwealth $20 million.

“Today’s Supreme Court ruling was a victory for Pennsylvania voters who will now be able to cast ballots for congressional candidates in districts not unconstitutionally manipulated to make them uncompetitive,” said Micah Sims, Common Cause Pennsylvania’s executive director.

The victory in Pennsylvania for opponents of partisan gerrymandering suggests a new mode of attack, by challenging redistricting in state courts under state constitutions.

The U.S. Supreme Court has never thrown out a state’s redistricting plan by finding it so infected with partisan bias that it violates voters’ constitutional rights.

But the court has on its current docket two cases — one from Wisconsin and one from Maryland — that raise the question.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...c9f29a55815_story.html?utm_term=.9394a82d8b17

 

[Arkain2K]

 

[Andy Capp]

It's just too bad this didn't happen before it decided an election that put the manilla gorilla in office.

 

[SeefourDC]

It's just too bad this didn't happen before it decided an election that put the manilla gorilla in office.

Amazing how much people really don't know about how voting works...

 

[Arkain2K]

Supreme Court vote 9-0 to sidesteps partisan gerrymandering cases, let maps stand for now
By Ariane de Vogue and Eli Watkins | June 18, 2018​

The Supreme Court on Monday sidestepped two major cases concerning partisan gerrymandering, allowing controversial district maps to stand and be used in this fall's midterm elections.

The 9-0 ruling authored by Chief Justice John Roberts in a Wisconsin case is a blow to Democrats who argued the Republican-drawn maps prevented fair and effective representation by diluting voters' influence and penalizing voters based on their political beliefs.

While the ruling will let the maps be used, the justices dodged the question of whether they are legal. The Supreme Court has a standard limiting the overreliance on race in map-drawing, except under the most limited circumstances. The court has not been successful in developing a test concerning the overreliance on politics.

Democrats had won a challenge in a lower court, but the Supreme Court's decision Monday would limit who can bring such cases in the future.

The second case was out of Maryland, where Republicans challenged a district map drawn by Democrats. The justices said that a lower court did not act improperly in leaving the map in place.

In an unsigned opinion with no dissents, the justices said that the challengers failed to reach the high bar of showing "irreparable harm" that would be necessary for a preliminary injunction to block the map.

"Even if we assume -- contrary to the findings of the District Court -- that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their claims, the balance of equities and the public interest tilted against their request for a preliminary injunction," the court said.

The court's opinion in Maryland case means that for now the justices will leave having to answer whether the court can set a standard for when politicians go too far in drawing lines to benefit one party over another for another day.

Roberts sends Wisconsin to lower court

Roberts walked a fine line in his opinion in the Wisconsin case, finding the challengers did not have the legal right to bring the case.

Under normal circumstances, Roberts wrote, "we usually direct the dismissal" of the case. He added, "This is not the usual case."

The court opted instead to send the case back to the lower court so the challengers might have another chance to "prove concrete and particularized injuries" by showing there had been a burden on their individual votes. That showing, in turn, would allow the challengers to proceed to the merits of the case.

That could be the reason Roberts got the liberals to sign on. Many believed the justices might use "standing" -- or the legal right to bring a case -- as an off ramp to avoid the merits in the case.

But few believed the opinion would be unanimous.

Roberts stressed that "we express no view on the merits of the plaintiffs' case." But he also cautioned that such challenges might be hard to bring down the road.

He noted that how the challengers bring these cases is key.

"It is a case about group political interests, not individual legal rights," he wrote. "But the Court is not responsible for vindicating generalized partisan preferences. The Court's constitutionally prescribed role is to vindicate the individual rights of the people before it."

Liberals wanted court to act

While the liberals on the court agreed with the decision to send the Wisconsin case back down to the lower court, they emphasized that the court should someday take up such cases.

"Partisan gerrymandering no doubt burdens individual votes, but it also causes other harms," Justice Elena Kagan wrote.

She called partisan gerrymandering "incompatible with democratic principles."

There is a separate and similar challenge in the pipeline coming out of North Carolina, and the court could decide soon whether or not to hear that case.

"Courts -- and in particular this court -- will again be called on to redress extreme partisan gerrymanders," Kagan wrote. "I am hopeful we will then step up to our responsibility to vindicate the Constitution against a contrary law."

Elizabeth Wydra, president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, told CNN that Kagan's concurrence showed "the substantive battle over the constitutionality of partisan gerrymandering is far from over."

Wydra said there does not appear to be five votes on the court to say definitively the courts must stay out of partisan gerrymandering.

Kennedy most silent

"Most likely Justice Kennedy's vote is still in play when a case gets to the court with the right plaintiffs and the right theory of harm," Wydra said. "And Kagan's concurrence today makes a powerful case to Justice Kennedy that when that case comes, he should recognize that partisan gerrymandering is incompatible with the Constitution and democratic values."

On Monday, Justice Anthony Kennedy stayed relatively silent. The last time the Supreme Court heard a major partisan gerrymandering case, in 2004, four conservative justices said the issue should be decided by the political branches, not the courts. But Kennedy was unwilling to bar all future claims of injury from partisan gerrymanders.

Before Monday's decision, court watchers thought Kennedy might have found a standard that courts could use when deciding when states go too far in using politics to draw state lines. But not only did he refrain from writing separately, he also declined to join the concurring opinion put forward by the liberals.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/06/18/politics/supreme-court-gerrymandering-decision/index.html

 

[Arkain2K]

California offers NC a model for elections without gerrymandering
By Ned Barnett | September 05, 2018

The 14-members of California Citizens Redistricting Commission, who redrew the state’s legislative and congressional maps. ​

Three Californians have come to North Carolina this week like characters in a Jules Verne novel. They’re journeying into the past to rescue the people of a lost world still ruled by a shape-shifting creature called the gerrymander.

The three members of California’s Citizens Redistricting Commission are touring what may be the nation’s most extremely gerrymandered state with a message of how to regain democracy: Adopt an independent redistricting system where voters — not political mapmakers — decide elections.

The visitors here at the invitation of Common Cause of North Carolina and Blueprint North Carolina, a network of social justice organizations. One of them, Cynthia Dai, a Democrat, said North Carolina, like much of the nation, has lost its democracy to gerrymandering, but “in California, we grabbed it back.”

That pullback came in the form of a 2008 proposition backed by then-Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to take legislative redistricting out of the hands of politicians and give it to a 14-member citizens commission of five Democrats, five Republicans and four members not affiliated with either major party. A 2010 proposition expanded the commission’s authority to include congressional redistricting. The commission approved its first map of new congressional and legislative districts in 2011.

Redistricting occurs every 10 years to adjust election districts to population shifts shown by the national Census. Four states including California use independent commissions to redistrict.

Other members on the trip are Libert “Gil” Ontai, a Republican, and Connie Malloy, an unaffiliated voter. The commissioners will be preaching the healing power of independent redistricting this week in Durham, Fayetteville and Asheville.

Malloy said the independent redistricting movement arose from a low point when Californians were fed up with the legislature and had recently recalled Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat. That frustration gave rise to the movement to end partisan redistricting and the entrenched, unresponsive political power it supports.

“Ten years ago California was broken,” she said Tuesday during a visit to The News & Observer. “It has been a process of ‘how do citizens take back their government so it works on their behalf?’ ”

The process involves an elaborate outreach to citizens. More than 30,000 people applied to serve on the commission. Those applicants were culled by state auditors down to a pool of 36. From that group, eight commissioners were randomly selected. Those commissioners reviewed the remaining applicants and selected the final six commissioners.

The process, along with a primary system that advances the top two vote-getters to the general election regardless of party, has reinvigorated California politics with new faces in office, more consensus among lawmakers and a more popular legislature. A poll in May found the approval rating of the California state legislature at 44 percent, up from 10 percent in 2010. (The approval rating topped 50 percent in 2016.) Congress’ approval rating is 17 percent. A January poll by Public Policy Polling put the N. C. General Assembly’s approval rating at 19 percent.

Bringing independent redistricting to North Carolina will be harder than in California. Voters here cannot put propositions on the ballot, but they can elect legislators who are willing to give up the ability to shape districts in their favor and give that power to citizens.

The key is to convince voters it’s possible. Ontai said, “A lot of the malaise is people thinking they can’t make a difference.”

But they can, if they’re moved from discouragement to determination. “People have to get angry enough to get change,” Dai said.

The citizens of North Carolina should be angry enough. Republican lawmakers drew their party a 10-3 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation and supermajorities in the state House and Senate. The legislature’s all-white Republican majority looks nothing like a state that is 22 percent black and nearly 10 percent Hispanic.

California is showing the way to defeat the gerrymander and take democracy back. That way starts in November.

https://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/article217813075.html

 

[Arkain2K]

Introduced by Senator Vincent Hughes, former Attorney General Eric Holder visited Philadelphia in his capacity as chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. Mr. Holder was joined by candidates who are committed to doing away with gerrymandering.

 

[Fluffernutter]

Article 1, section 2, clause 3:

"The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand"

I suggest we do what the Constitution originally demanded...11,000 members of the House of Representatives. Then, there would be no gerrymandering.

 

[Arkain2K]

Federal judges toss Maryland congressional map for partisan gerrymandering
The judges ordered the state to redraw two key districts before the 2020 election.
By STEVEN SHEPARD | 11/07/2018

​

A three-judge panel of a federal court on Wednesday threw out Maryland’s congressional map, reviving the legal fight over partisan gerrymandering just one day after the 2018 midterm elections.

The judges unanimously ordered Maryland to redraw two of its House districts before the 2020 election, saying Democratic leaders improperly broke up a Republican-leaning seat in Western Maryland when they crafted the map after the 2010 Census.

Maryland’s 6th District, which picked then-GOP Rep. Roscoe Bartlett under the old lines, has gone for the Democratic candidate in each election since, including electing David Trone — the self-funding Total Wine and More CEO who spent $18.2 million on this year’s campaign — on Tuesday.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court heard arguments about whether it should put a halt to this year’s elections because the map was unfair to Republicans in the district. The case introduced the possibility that the justices would establish firm guidelines about just how far political actors, like governors and state legislators, can go in drawing congressional lines that maximize their party’s advantage.

Instead, the high court punted — ruling one week prior to the 2018 primaries that it was too late redraw Maryland's map this year and kicking the map back down to a lower court.

Wasting no time, the three-judge panel on Wednesday found that Maryland’s Democratic leaders, including then-Gov. Martin O’Malley, enacted a congressional map that violates the First Amendment rights of Republican voters in the 6th District. And even though the map has already been used for four elections, including on Tuesday, it cannot be used one final time in 2020, the judges wrote.

“Because the State’s enactment of the 2011 redistricting law violated the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights, it is well recognized that the plaintiffs are, and will be, experiencing ongoing constitutional injury in the absence of a new redistricting map,” the judges wrote. “And only an injunction mandating a new, lawful map, not money damages, can remedy this injury.”

The three judges are James Bredar, who was appointed by then-President Barack Obama; Paul Niemeyer, appointed by Ronald Reagan; and George Levy Russell, also an Obama appointee.

The court is ordering Maryland to redraw two of the state’s eight districts — the 6th and the 8th, currently held by Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin — prior to the state’s 2020 primaries. Any changes to the state’s map could disrupt the 7-to-1 advantage Democrats have enjoyed in Maryland's congressional delegation since the current map was enacted.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican who was reelected Tuesday by a robust, double-digit margin in the Democratic state, celebrated the ruling in a statement on Wednesday.

“This is a victory for the vast majority of Marylanders who want free and fair elections and the numerous advocates from across the political spectrum who have been fighting partisan gerrymandering in our state for decades,” said Hogan. “With this unanimous ruling, the federal court is confirming what we in Maryland have known for a long time — that we have the most gerrymandered districts in the country, they were drawn this way for partisan reasons, and they violate Marylanders’ constitutional rights.”

But while Hogan praised the court’s decision, any appeal — which could go directly back to the Supreme Court — would come from Democratic state Attorney General Brian Frosh’s office. A spokesperson said Wednesday that Frosh’s office “is looking at options” but declined to comment further.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018...sional-map-for-partisan-gerrymandering-973245

 

[Arkain2K]

 

[Arkain2K]

 

[ElKarlo]

Good, I'm from this district. It's amazing how bad Maryland Dems are, even the Washington post says they've got too far

 

[Roaming East]

Article 1, section 2, clause 3:

"The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand"

I suggest we do what the Constitution originally demanded...11,000 members of the House of Representatives. Then, there would be no gerrymandering.

dig Albert Speers corpse up. We're gonna need his ass to draft up a new capitol building. Im thinking bulldoze all of Baltimore and turn it into the American Grosse Halle

 

[Jorge Luis Borges]

Meanwhile, Trump supporters hated it and talked about how unfair it was. Then, election night comes, and beliefs flipped overnight.

Source? I didn't hear any of this personally, but I'm not often tuned in to conservative talk radio or FOX News. Who are the prominent conservative commentators who hated the electoral college?

 

[Arkain2K]

Good, I'm from this district. It's amazing how bad Maryland Dems are, even the Washington post says they've got too far

This is why I laughed at all the partisan drones earlier in this thread who think gerrymandering is a Republican or Democrat phenomenon.

Unless the task of redistricting is put in the hand of an independent commission not beholden to any political party, whatever party in power WILL try to take advantage of it in their state.

 

[Arkain2K]

U.S. Supreme Court to take up Virginia redistricting case on racial gerrymandering
By Gregory S. Schneider and Robert Barnes | November 13, 2018

The U.S. Supreme Court will take up the issue of redistricting in Virginia, agreeing to hear an appeal filed by Republican legislators after a lower court’s ruling that 11 House of Delegates districts must be redrawn to correct racial gerrymandering.

The action does not appear to halt the redistricting process, though, which is underway at the hands of a “special master” appointed by a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

House Speaker Kirk Cox (R-Colonial Heights), who filed the appeal, said he is considering next steps, which could include seeking to halt redistricting until the Supreme Court rules on the case.

“We will take the next few days to consider that and make an announcement at the appropriate time,” Cox said via email.

Marc E. Elias, an election lawyer representing those who challenged the design of the districts, noted in a tweet: “This is the 3rd time SCOTUS will hear cases related to VA’s unconstitutional gerrymander. We have prevailed in each of the first two and expect to again here. What is most important is that the voters of VA have constitutional maps in time for the 2019 state house elections.”

At stake is control of Virginia’s House of Delegates. The GOP barely held onto its majority last year in the 100-seat chamber after 15 Democrats flipped seats in elections. One Republican prevailed in a random tiebreaker, leaving the GOP with a 51-49 edge.

The 11 districts are in Hampton Roads and greater Richmond, but redrawing them will affect several surrounding districts, as well, making next year’s elections crucial for determining the balance of power.

The federal judges found that the districts were drawn to concentrate black voters and deprive them of representation. But Cox countered in his appeal that the redistricting plan won wide bipartisan approval when it passed in 2011, including among African American legislators.

Unlike in cases involving partisan gerrymandering, where the Supreme Court has never found a state map so infected with politics that it deemed it unconstitutional, the justices routinely are called upon to examine electoral districts for racial discrimination.

Under Supreme Court precedents, the maps can sometimes require an examination of race to make sure minorities have a chance to elect candidates of their choice. But race cannot be the predominate factor in drawing districts. In Virginia and other states, challengers have said Republicans have packed minorities into a small number of districts to make surrounding areas more hospitable to GOP candidates.

Since Virginia’s maps were last redrawn in 2011, the Supreme Court has ordered new lines for congressional districts — resulting in the election of a second African American member of Congress. In 2017, it overturned a lower court’s decision upholding the drawing of the state legislative districts at issue here and sent it back for more work under new guidelines.

The lower court reconsidered and ordered the redistricting this year.

Gov. Ralph Northam (D) called the General Assembly into special session over the summer to work on a redistricting plan to satisfy the judges, who had set a deadline of Oct. 30. But legislators failed to come up with one that Northam would support, so the matter moved back to the court.

The judges appointed Bernard Grofman, a University of California at Irvine political science professor, as special master to oversee the drawing of new lines.

House Democrats said Tuesday that the Supreme Court’s decision doesn’t stop that process.

“The important thing is the Supreme Court hasn’t granted a stay as of right now. The district court is free to move forward with drawing the maps,” said Kathryn Gilley, communications director for the House Democratic caucus.

Cox said he hopes the court will use this chance to clear up confusion about redistricting standards, addressing “the chaos that has resulted from a bevy of redistricting laws and court cases in this difficult and confusing area of law.”

Deciding whether districts were drawn to give minorities fair representation, versus packing them together to dilute influence elsewhere, is an intensive process. In the three-judge panel’s latest ruling, the majority opinion ran for 98 pages, while the dissent was 103.

Elias, the Washington attorney representing those who challenged the districts, said he believes the Supreme Court will agree with the majority. “The [lower] court was simply applying the law it got from the Supreme Court” the first time the justices considered the case in 2017, he said in an interview.

Proving that the lower court committed “clear error” in applying the law is “close to a nearly impossible” task, he said.

Justin Levitt, a redistricting expert at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said the court may be more interested in a question it highlighted when agreeing to hear the case: whether Republican leaders in the House of Delegates have the legal standing to pursue the litigation.

The state’s Democratic attorney general, Mark R. Herring, told the Supreme Court that it is his job to decide whether to continue the lawsuit, and that he concluded it was better to agree with the district court’s order and redraw the lines.

“Virginia law is clear that in the commonwealth, like in most states, the ultimate authority to speak for the state in federal court rests with its elected attorney general,” Virginia Solicitor General Toby J. Heytens wrote in a brief to the court. “Having spent more than three years defending this case, the attorney general has determined that the state’s interests would best be served by bringing this long-running and expensive litigation to a close so that the unconstitutional racial gerrymanders identified in the district court’s opinion may promptly be remedied.”

The state’s brief argues that one house of the General Assembly cannot represent the state’s position. And while individual House members have interest in where legislative lines are drawn, the House as an institution is not injured by the district court’s order, the state contends. Such injury is necessary for finding a party has legal standing to bring a lawsuit.

Republicans disputed that in their brief to the court. Such a rule “would place state legislatures at the mercy of state executives, often of different political parties, in redistricting litigation,” wrote Washington lawyer Efrem M. Braden, representing the House. “State executives routinely abandon redistricting legislation for political reasons. . . . No precedent supports [the state’s argument] that, although any district resident can be a plaintiff, only the state executive can defend.”

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