"... for drawing state assembly and senate districts.... The [Wisconsin] court adopted the [Democratic] Governor’s maps, and those maps added another majority-minority district around Milwaukee. The governor added this district saying it was required by the Voting Rights Act... The Supreme Court’s opinion today says either the Governor or the Supreme Court misapplied the Supreme Court’s VRA and racial gerrymandering precedents... The state supreme court should have considered under strict scrutiny 'whether a race-neutral alternative that did not add a seventh majority-black district would deny black voters equal political opportunity.'... [T]he Court used a case in an emergency procedural posture to reach out and decide an issue.... It decided these issues in ways hostile to minority voting rights without giving a full opportunity for airing out the issues and pointing out how this will further hurt voters of color."
Writes Rick Hasen at Election Law Blog.
Here's the opinion.
Why do only Sotomayor and Kagan dissent? What about Breyer? From "The Supreme Court’s Astonishing, Inexplicable Blow to the Voting Rights Act in Wisconsin" by Mark Joseph Stern at Slate
Only Sotomayor and Kagan noted their dissents; it’s possible that Justice Stephen Breyer dissented as well, but chose not to note it. (This opacity is a perennial problem with the shadow docket.) He may have simply decided not to publicize his disagreement—choosing, perhaps, not to rock the boat months before his retirement. It is difficult, if not impossible, to believe that Breyer agreed with the majority, since he has publicly opposed its approach to the VRA in innumerable cases.
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I can't figure out what they did, but no alternative works well to give blacks a voice. In a solid black district, dissenters have no voice and the representative has no reason to favor the district at all. In a population-representative district the blacks never elect a representative.
The solution is don't even consider race. Then there's no question of voice.
i keep forgetting; is gerrymandering GOOD? or BAD?
Life is SOOO confusing
Spare me the wailing of the lawyers.
The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race, as the Chief Justice once wrote.
Last Week when i was fishing in Wyoming; their legislature announced THEIR redistricting
It's COMPLETE gerrymandering! NONE of their US Congressional Representation will come from a district that isn't Majority Republican. NOT ONE! out of the Entire State of Wyoming!
Now, THAT'S gerrymandering!
The headline, with it’s inclusion of ‘bizarre’ commentary, plus Kagan and Soto tells me this was a leftie partisan play that didn’t go their way. Maybe Breyer didn’t want to play partisan hack this time? I suspect Ann would have come out of retirement to add her own commentary if the conservatives were being egregious…
…but they all just fairly interpret, don’t they…
(not a question)…
Quite the rebuke of the 4 justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
The friction between the Equal Protection Clause and federal civil rights laws. Try harder Wisconsin.
"It decided these issues in ways hostile to minority voting rights without giving a full opportunity for airing out the issues and pointing out how this will further hurt voters of color. It continues to chip away at the Voting Rights Act without acknowledging that it is killing off the last major protection for minority voters from discriminatory districting plans."
From Rick Hasen's analysis. I know where he stands. He wants to continue discriminating on the basis of race.
How do we know that voters of color are further hurt by the decision? Because there will be one less bloviating political hack in Madison claiming to represent the interests of black, brown, yellow and other POC voters in and around Milwaukee as he or she (or otherwise) works some fiddle to keep state employees in beer and sandwiches.
I'm sure that it may not be what all the legal mumbo-jumbo means but in practice it seems to he keeping the courts out of redistricting. And that's a positive.
"It is difficult, if not impossible, to believe that Breyer agreed with the majority, since he has publicly opposed its approach to the VRA in innumerable cases." - innumerable? That's a sign of lazy journalism.
Also, Rick Hasen says " It decided these issues in ways hostile to minority voting rights " That's assuming facts not in evidence. These don't impact the right to vote at all. No voter (whether minority or not) is disenfranchised by these decisions. In my hometown I have almost no opportunity to elect a mayor of my choosing because the vast majority of the city's voters disagree with me on the issues. Too bad, so sad. Nevertheless my voting rights are fully intact and I go to the polls in almost every election and vote my conscience. If Hasen should rewrite that to say they decided the issues in ways hostile to Democratic party gerrymandering. Then I could agree with him.
Note:
The 15th Amendment, which is the only possible basis for Congress having the power to pass the VRA, does not grant black Democrats in Alabama MORE rights than white Republicans in New York
When you have a State run by racist anti-black white Democrats, who are blocking black Democrats from being able to effectively participate in the elections process, something like the VRA is legitimate
But when you have a State controlled by Republicans, trying to get as many Republican Representatives as possible, and as few Democrat ones as possible, then black Democrats have no more right not to be gerrymandered than do republican voters in NY, CA, or MA
The 2020 Presidential election in MA was 65.6% Biden to 32.1% Trump
MA has a republican Governor, and ten years ago had a Republican Senator. So clearly 1/2 the populace is willing to vote for the right Republican
MA has 0 Republican members of Congress.
I'll worry about the "denied rights" of black Democrats to proportional representation when MA has at least 2, and ofter 3, GOP members of the House of Representatives.
Until then? The GOP has every right to gerrymander the hell out of Democrat voters, and it doesn't matter what their skin color is
SCOTUS says:
The question that our VRA precedents ask and the court
failed to answer is whether a race-neutral alternative that
did not add a seventh majority-black district would deny
black voters equal political opportunity. Answering that
question requires an “‘“intensely local appraisal”’ of the
challenged district.”
At the WI Supreme Court (WISC!), Brian Hagedorn joined the three lefty women and ran afoul of the bosses on SCOTUS. The three conservative women dissenters at WISC were right after all. Poor Brian. Only dude on the court and is probably the dumbest one there. Here, he tried to appease the lefties and got his ass handed to him by SCOTUS. The milquetoast opinion here (consistent with the ones he usually serves up) was tested . . . and was found wanting.
Big win for Rick Esenberg and the Wisconson Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL). Rick is a rights-based conservative and usually wins the cases he sets his sights on. Here, WILL and its allies beat back the combination of evil legal forces that included the sleazy Marc Elias and the usual home-grown legal agitators.
The law as it is has a major contradiction. You're supposed to do and not do something at the same time. I've taught the cases in this area, and it's not pleasant, and it's not something I'm inclined to explain because it would be very wordy, and it wouldn't much help.
Here in Texas, the Republicans have faced the future and decided that convincing Black and Hispanic voters to vote Republican, rather than relying on gerrymandering forever, might just be a way to keep the purple demographics from going fully blue. An idea so very crazy, it just might work.
why does the a Republican majority Winsconsin SCOTUS constantly side with Democrats/Liberals?
Anyway, this case is not about "Gerrymandering". The Scotus was upset over the Wis. Court misapplying its judicial dicta on the VRA. If they has somewhow found for the Governors map with dragging in the VRA, I doubt the Court would've done anything.
Its very weird how all the state supreme courts are involved in determining Congressional and state legistlative districts. At least in Red states and purple states. For example, the Pennslyvannia court just drew up its own map. So much for the People. Something similar happened in NC.
The law as it is has a major contradiction. You're supposed to do and not do something at the same time.
And the "evil Conservatives" on SCTUS are trying to clean it up
But what they should be doing is saying "this is a law whose Constitutional justification has passed. When white Democrats were using their power to keep black Democrats from having a voice because they were black, that was a violation of the 15th Amendment. But Republicans trying to gerrymander Democrats out of seats is no more of a Constitutional violation than Democrats trying to gerrymander Republicans out of seats. We can look at CA, NY, IL, MA, and MD, and see that Democrats do a lot of gerrymandering. So until such time as we decide to block anyone from gerrymandering, everyone gets to do it"
Wait, it’s “Astonishing and inexplicable” that the US Supreme Court ordered strict scrutiny be applied (compelling state interest/ least intrusive means) before the government discriminates on the basis of race?
That’s neither “astonishing” nor “inexplicable” in my book.
Lefty’s gotta lefty I guess.
The law as it is has a major contradiction. You're supposed to do and not do something at the same time.
And Alabama made that argument in a case that will be heard and decided next year. That if you have to take race into account in order to come up with a map that has more "minority majority" seats, IOW if neutral redistricting principles don't get you there, then nothing can require you to go there.
Which is at least a reasonable starting point
Oh well, black people can't vote anyway so I don't see what difference this makes.
who-knew said...
I'm sure that it may not be what all the legal mumbo-jumbo means but in practice it seems to he keeping the courts out of redistricting. And that's a positive.
It's keeping the courts out of redistricting for the 2022 election.
We'll have to see what happens for the 2024 election.
The Biden Census Bureau took its own sweet time about getting the numbers out to the point that States could start redistricting.
Apparently they thought GOP State Legislatures would act, Dem courts would act, and Courts would win because it was too close to the election to get an appeal heard.
Instead SCOTUS is pretty consistently saying "it's too close to the election for the Courts to get involved"
The best part is that the Dems push for early voting pushes all the deadlines earlier, and thus gave SCOTUS the justification to keep the Courts out
The VRA requiring minority majority districts tends to be a net negative for blacks politically. They might have a few more actual black members in total than they would otherwise, although that can be disputed. Since blacks are often concentrated in districts, that has typically benefited Republicans since blacks have historically voted overwhelmingly for Dems. Concentrating blacks in districts is a natural GOP gerrymander.
Missouri is a state where the GOP has had an alliance for years with black Dem politicians to carve out districts for them, which yields overall more GOP districts. If black voters wanted more Dem representatives in total, such agreements work against their interests. VRA is a tool used to give political and legal cover to such agreements. Since I am a conservative who votes Republican, it works for me.
gilbar - clever. I see complete gerrymandering in Delaware too,
besides Alaska, Vermont, Montana , and north and south Dakota
‘ law as it is has a major contradiction. You're supposed to do and not do something at the same time. I've taught the cases in area, and it's not pleasant, and it's not something I'm inclined to explain because it would be very wordy, and it wouldn't much help.”
This interests me, what happens if two laws are logically inconsistent? I would assume that you endorse the most recent one. If both are constitutional amendments, the authors should have made claims rejecting earlier amendments, like prohibition.
Josephbleau said...
This interests me, what happens if two laws are logically inconsistent?
It's not two different laws (in which case the last one passed wins), it's the same law, passed at teh same time.
The way the present system works is that if a State Legislature is dominated by Party A, then there are supposed to be a majority of Justices on the US Supreme Court who are members of Party B (or are idealogically affiliated with Party B) to reverse the elected Legislature's decisions. This is called "Democracy".
global & ngtrains-
That's nothing. You want to see gerrymandering, look at the Senate district for Hawaii. The lines aren't even contiguous.
Greg The Class Traitor
When you have a State run by racist anti-black white Democrats, who are blocking black Democrats from being able to effectively participate in the elections process, something like the VRA is legitimate.
Preach.
The fundamental issue even beyond VRA is the refusal of the party of slavery, the KKK, but most specifically Jim Crow to acknowledge their extraordinary racism required extraordinary remediation, which should have been limited in scope to putting us on a path to color-blind government. Smuggling their race-centric world view into civil rights legislation and court decisions was a great jujitsu move.
ngtrains said...
gilbar - clever. I see complete gerrymandering in Delaware too,
besides Alaska, Vermont, Montana , and north and south Dakota
Maryland is a notorious example too. They glued a bit of Annapolis onto the Eastern Shore to dilute the Republicans there. I guess the lines run across the bridge.
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