Today’s bad news moment. Even the most extreme, deliberate, race based gerrymandering is now legal, and safe from the federal courts. Nauseating. In a 5 to 4 ruling, the stacked, partisan current USSCT overuled the 6 member majority in Davis v. Bandemeyer without acknowledgement, and stated that federal courts have no jurisdiction over state gerrymandering at all. Want all the dirty, dripping details, briefs, and everything? Scotus blog has them for you at https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/06/gerrymandering-symposium-court-to-foxes-please-guard-henhouse/
John Adams must be spinning in his grave.
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I’m not at all surprised constitutionally. The Constitution only requires that districts be equal. I believe it is the VRA that requires race to be taken into account, but there would need to be a law requiring a partisan consideration for the courts to act. I don’t like partisan gerrymandering either, but as far as I can tell the ruling is constitutionally sound.
I’m reminded of the actual content of the Mueller report.
My understanding is that this decision puts the burden on Congress and removes it from the Court. It sounds as though this ruling says that if Democrats want to stop gerrymandaring, then we do so by disallowing it. This is quite similar to what Mr. Mueller did in his report — Mr. Mueller said that the Constitution puts the burden of prosecuting a President on Congress. He also presented a reasonably detailed roadmap of how a willing Congress could accomplish that.
I agree that the most recent round of gerrymandering was great for Republicans and awful for Democrats. My recollection is that the 1990 redrawing went the other way. Was John Adams active then as well?
It fear that we Democrats are doing too much wailing, playing too many games, and far too little actual governing.
We have had a majority in the House since January, and we have done virtually nothing since then about the most burning issue facing us — the very existence of American democracy. Our President jovially bantered with Vladimir Putin yesterday, joshing about how best to kill the free press. Our Speaker refuses to even load the only weapon we have.
Our job is to turn America blue again. That is how we solve this problem. Our current House leadership is not doing that. Elizabeth Warren is the only candidate I heard this week who even understands the task: “We have to make this Congress reflect the will of the people.
I was not sympathetic to GOP complaints about Democratic gerrymandering after the 1990 census. I suspect I would have welcomed this Supreme Court decision at that time.
My bottom line is that I see these as our issues to resolve. I fear we abrogate our duty by expecting a special prosecutor or the Supreme Court to do the heavy lifting for us.