SCOTUS has already decided against the Wisconsin gerrymandering and looks to be seen as non- partisan by taking up the Maryland mandering to rule against it.
Exactly. Or at least that’s the most obvious inference.
Western Maryland is already shaped very strangely due to the path of the Potomac River to the south and the straight line border with PA to the north. In some places, Maryland is only a couple of miles wide.
Western MD is also sparsely populated so to create similarly populated districts as required by the Constitution, diluting it with suburban communities may have been necessary. So the MD legislature may have a legitimate argument for the shape of that district. As for the rest of the funny-shaped districts, The area near the Chesapeake Bay is also highly irregular and since MD is so strongly D to begin with, it’s hard to make the case that partisanship caused the strange shape of those districts.
This could very well be a Rs trying to press a false equivalence argument to dilute the issue where they aggressively gerrymandered.
That would be optimistic. The cynic in me says that the SC decided that gerrymandering is OK and picked the Maryland case to show that “everybody does it”.
“everybody does it” is not a legal basis upon which the SCOTUS can hang a decision.
SCROTUS loves to play ball, doesn’t it? Although I am curious to see how the illegitimate SCJ by the name of Gurrsitch, or some such, will vote on this topic. I’m guessing he’s definitely going to play ball here. After all, that’s why he’s there in the first place.
The cynic in me and my intransigent view that the Right is Evil, would say the SCOTUS has ruled 5-4 for Wisconsin gerrymandering and took up the Maryland case to rule against their gerrymandering 5-4 so as to purposefully give Ginsberg and the rest of us a fatal apoplectic fit.
Yep, You took my cynic and raised it to a new level.
You might be right, but it does also make sense for the SCOTUS to examine as many of these cases together as they can before issuing a judgement on districting that will carry weight in every state in the union.
I thought the SCOTUS had already taken up this case.
Most obvious, or most optimistic?
I’d love to see the SC address partisan gerrymandering, because it is a huge threat to democracy (and because the GOP is currently using it to huge advantage). However, I’m concerned to see the SC taking it on when the issue is not well defined and the remedy is even less clear.
My concern is that the SC will use the cases to explain why it won’t take action on the gerrymandering.
Some problems I see (rank amateur here, remember, so laugh at me in private and be kind in public):
– partisan gerrymandering has long been practiced by legislators and accepted by the courts
– it isn’t clear if the SC would agree that excessively partisan gerrymandering (EPG) violates any Constitutional protection
– but, even if the SC agrees that EPG could be unconstitutional, it is not clear what measure or measures you would use to objectively determine the degree of partisanship
– and, if the court did recognize some objective measure(s), where would the threshold(s) of EPG be?
– and, if the court had a measurement and threshold, what is an acceptable remedy? What is an acceptable process for that remedy?
It all sounds way too messy for this SC, and I believe that the SC is very loathe to issue a decision that is likely to generate the need for many, many more decisions going forward.
As an example of the messiness, consider the “voter efficiency” measurement that at least one court has looked at in the Pennsylvania case. Some problems with voter efficiency include:
– measurement requires an election, so a map would be used for at least one election. With delaying action, it might last two elections.
– voter turnout can vary widely, between off years and Presidential election years, so a map acceptable in one election could lose that status in the next. It isn’t hard to imagine a case where a map that is corrected for a Presidential-year election then has to be corrected after the off-year election, and then continues the cycle.
– the voter efficiency measurement becomes problematic when large numbers of voters register as independent, or if large numbers of voters registered with Party A routinely vote for Party B candidates, or if large numbers of registered voters stay home in districts where races are not competitive.
Go ahead. Make my day.
I’m okay with this not being ready in time for 2018. We’ve already got Pennsylvania and the wave behind us. If gerrymandering is banned before the next redistricting that will be huge.
I used to live in MD. There’s no question it’s gerrymandered. Never really understood the shape of the districts, they aren’t necessary for Dems to win. They could have easily drawn more compact districts that led to a delegation of 8D and 0R. A proper map would look something like this
R’s would get 2, D’s would get 6.
I share your concern that the SCOTUS is merely picking these cases up so it can definitively retreat from the problem.
However, as to your other concerns, I believe there are reasonable answers. Several of your questions have to do with measuring the degree of partisan gerrymandering. The Court likes to establish tests more than objective criteria. I don’t think we’ll see the Court bless any method of quantifying partisan gerrymandering, which might then be paired with some kind of threshold measurement. What is more likely, if the Court wishes to combat the 'mander, is that they will articulate a standard of some sort, and using typically vague language.
The conservative Court is really only comfortable advancing regulation when it can be tied very directly to constitutionally protected rights. So, if they articulate a test, it will be expressed in terms of the right(s) at issue. We might get something like “when such boundaries place an undue burden on” or “… place an onerous burden” or somesuch. The strength of the new protection will rest entirely on a single adjective, like “undue” vs “onerous.” There being no canonical table of ranked adjectives, it will fall to judges and justices in future cases to grok the facts and evaluate how appropriate is adjective to the case before them. Enforcement will therefore be uneven.
There are plenty of hard-science ways of measuring and evaluating a legislative map, with all kinds of interesting named metrics. There is zero chance the Court will adopt or enshrine any of them in a ruling.
It’s possible, alas, for them to rule against one district without ruling against gerrymandering in general. Especially this court. I hope to be wrong. (Is the first amendment right the only one being argued in the maryland case? Because that could distinguish it.)
Not that that’s always been a huge impediment.
That would certainly be compact, although that division of the one Balmer suburban district might be considered questionable. OTOH Maryland is in point of fact a small state that’s primarily suburbs, so drawing an entire map that isn’t arguably fair to the electorate should be easier than in, say, Pennsylvania.
This Supreme Court is a shell company owned by the Republican Party.