Well done SCOTUS!
And unanimous to boot!
Novel idea …one person one vote…!!! Good move. Unanimous indeed!
I weep bitter tears of sad centrism at this radical partisan decision, the result of both sides’ unwillingness to reach the obvious, historically grounded, compromise of counting 3/5 of those not eligible to vote for purposes of drawing districts. This is Obama’s fault. When will he lead?
Voter Suppression 3.0: Conservative Math.
When you get both Alito AND Thomas saying you’ve gone too far, that’s a pretty good indication you’ve gone deep, DEEP into wingnut territory.
Scalia: This is deeply disappointing. I go away for few weeks and everyone is now deep liberal.
Haven’t read it yet, but it will certainly be interesting trying to find Waldo in this decision…and by Waldo, I mean the thinly veiled hint that the conservatives on the SCOTUS offer to the conservative activist community so that when they bring a suit attacking one-person-one-vote next time around they can make better inroads on minority voting rights.
What struck me about this case when it came up was that the result that the plaintiffs were looking for was both evil and incredibly stupid. A can of worms that not even the right wing of the supreme court wanted to open. (Just think about it for a second: it’s difficult enough to determine/estimate the population of a district at census time. Figuring out the population of eligible voters – unless you went with the known-to-be-wrong estimate provided by voter registration lists – would require a ridiculously intrusive house-by-house check of ID at the very least.)
But I do wonder whether this became unanimous only after a 5-4 vote in favor of the plaintiffs was impossible.
TXGOP was aiming for the fences with this one.
Nice to see them strike out.
But my deeply held religious view is that prisoners, immigrants and minorities are not people in the fullest sense of the term. I feel that my religious liberty has been deeply violated by this radical verdict. This is tyranny!
I am not a lawyer, but I think this decision simply states that using total population is not unconstitutional. In other words, wingnuts just have to come up with another approach to disenfranchise that will satisfy Alito and Thomas later on.
Actually 5-0 with two concurrences.
Says the only black guy on the Court:
I write separately because this Court has never provided a sound basis for the one-person, one-vote principle. For 50 years, the Court has struggled to define what right that principle protects.
. . .
In my view, the majority has failed to provide a sound basis for the one-person, one vote principle because no such basis exists. The Constitution does not prescribe any one basis for apportionment within States. It instead leaves States significant leeway in apportioning their own districts to equalize total population, to equalize eligible voters, or to promote any other principle consistent with a Republican form of government. The majority should recognize the futility of choosing only one of these options. The Constitution leaves the choice to the people alone, not to this Court.
. . .
The Framers also understood that unchecked majorities could lead to tyranny of the majority. As a result, many viewed antidemocratic checks as indispensable to republican government.
. . .
Of particular concern for the Framers was the majority of people violating the property rights of the minority. Madison observed that “the oat common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property.”
. . .
The Court’s attempt to impose its political theory upon the States has produced a morass of problems. . . . First, in imbruing one person, one vote, the Court has arrogated to the Judiciary important value judgments that the Constitution reserves to people.
And on and on he goes, devoid of self-awareness, sturdily ignoring the historical fact of how much of the subtext of the anti-democratic sentiment by the Founders he lauds was slavery, casually waiving away half a century of precedent as entirely wrong-headed and thus ripe for overruling, ignoring, even, the paradox of just how it is The People are supposed to make decisions about whether they’ll continue to be equally represented if they aren’t equally represented.
Jesus wept.
In a representative democracy, proxies vote for individuals in all sorts of situations. Just as an elected official theoretically votes in a way that represents their district, a parent votes considering their minor children’s needs and so on. Not rocket science.
Oh good, they reminded them the Constitution applies to ‘people’ not just US citizens or registered voters.
GOOD! (purple monkey dishwasher)
my guess is the conservatives knew they couldn’t win without scalia’s vote so they decided not to dissent on such an insane case with no chance of winning.
Scalia would have objected.
This is their example of Equality. All legal/Illegal Aliens should count for redistricting. I am surprised that court wasn’t 4-4 on this. All Rs on SCOTUS are logically challenged in almost all cases.
Amazing how ‘strict constructionists’ invoke semi automatic weapons, the internet, public airways, etc. when concurring, but hold to the ‘founder’s intentions’ when dissenting.