May 23, 2024

"Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel A. Alito noted many predominantly Black precincts in Charleston were moved out of one district and into another."

"But 'because of the tight correlation between race and partisan preferences, this fact does little to show that race, not politics drove the legislature’s choice,' he wrote. He was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the justices nominated by Democrats, said the majority got it 'seriously wrong'.... Kagan warned that the majority opinion sends a message to lawmakers and mapmakers to use race as a proxy to achieve partisan ends. 'And so this "odious" practice of sorting citizens, built on racial generalizations and exploiting racial divisions, will continue,' she wrote. 'In the electoral sphere especially, where "ugly patterns of pervasive racial discrimination" have so long governed, we should demand better — of ourselves, of our political representatives, and most of all of this Court.'"

From "Supreme Court allows disputed South Carolina voting map/At issue was whether the map was an unconstitutional attempt to divvy voters up by race -- or was permitted partisan gerrymandering" (WaPo).

85 comments:

Leland said...

Should we review the consistency of minority's position on Affirmative Action?

Original Mike said...

"Elena Kagan, writing for the justices nominated by Democrats, …"

LOL


"…said the majority got it 'seriously wrong'.... Kagan warned that the majority opinion sends a message to lawmakers and mapmakers to use race as a proxy to achieve partisan ends. 'And so this "odious" practice of sorting citizens, built on racial generalizations and exploiting racial divisions, will continue,' she wrote."


I don't understand. Justices nominated by Democrats no longer want districts drawn to advantage minority candidates?

rehajm said...

shorter Kagan: Only my side should be allowed to divvy up voters for political advantage

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

'And so this "odious" practice of sorting citizens, built on racial generalizations and exploiting racial divisions, will continue,' she wrote. 'In the electoral sphere especially, where "ugly patterns of pervasive racial discrimination" have so long governed, we should demand better — of ourselves, of our political representatives, and most of all of this Court.'"

Has she checked in with her party lately?

deepelemblues said...

Kagan warned that the majority opinion sends a message to lawmakers and mapmakers to use race as a proxy to achieve partisan ends. 'And so this "odious" practice of sorting citizens, built on racial generalizations and exploiting racial divisions, will continue,' she wrote. 'In the electoral sphere especially, where "ugly patterns of pervasive racial discrimination" have so long governed, we should demand better — of ourselves, of our political representatives, and most of all of this Court.'

Ummmm... who wants to tell the very intelligent and knowledgeable leader of the court's left wing the practical political effect of 59 years of legislatively and judicially mandated black-majority congressional districts? I thought she was supposed to be the smart one...

RideSpaceMountain said...

"And so this "odious" practice of sorting citizens, built on racial generalizations and exploiting racial divisions, will continue"

Everything we can do, you shouldn't do better.

Mason G said...

"And so this "odious" practice of sorting citizens, built on racial generalizations and exploiting racial divisions, will continue,' she wrote."

Sounds like a good reason to oppose affirmative action laws. Does she?

narciso said...

So elias lost one out of four rounds yay

AlbertAnonymous said...

Cue the music….

Cue the usual commentators….

Hit the mute button.

rhhardin said...

Politicians gerrymandering don't care about race. Why would they? They're after votes, not color.

Anthony said...

So I guess this reverse psychology thing actually works sometimes?

hombre said...

Right, Elena. Democrats have never used race to "achieve partisan ends."

Is it possible that Kagan, the only one among the three Democrats with brains, really believes this caca?

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

Any chance Kagan is summoning her inner DiAngelo?

We need @realchrisrufo to go over their writings with a fine-tooth fake eyelash comb.

gspencer said...

So maybe the bros 'n the sistahs not be voting for Ds in lockstep, plantation-style.

n.n said...

Diversity politics leverages color blocs and class bigotry.

tim maguire said...

this "odious" practice of sorting citizens, built on racial generalizations and exploiting racial divisions, will continue

If I were to read the dissent, would I find an analysis showing how the court's history of requiring racial gerrymandering is somehow different from this example of racial gerrymandering?

I agree with Kagan that gerrymandering is wrong, that it undermines voting rights, and I'd like to see more effort to take politics out of the redistricting process, but I don't think that's what she's talking about. I think she's just fine with gerrymandering, with racial gerrymandering, with using redistricting to favor some voters over others. Just not this time.

For all her high dudgeon about principles, I don't think she is arguing from a principled position. She can't pound the facts, she can't pound the law, so she is pounding the table.

Christopher B said...

Justice Kagan, let me introduce you to Joe Biden, former the Democrat Senator from Delaware.

Hassayamper said...

I agree with Kagan that gerrymandering is wrong, that it undermines voting rights, and I'd like to see more effort to take politics out of the redistricting process, but I don't think that's what she's talking about. I think she's just fine with gerrymandering, with racial gerrymandering, with using redistricting to favor some voters over others. Just not this time.

That's exactly the argument Democrats make. Safe majority-black districts are mandatory, of course, but not TOO black please. Blacks also deserve to have double representation by white liberal Democrats in formerly competitive districts who will vote for more government handouts to blacks. Any failure to give blacks this extra representation is discriminatory. Good that the Court shot this horse shit down.

Yancey Ward said...

Politicians don't give a shit about race when it comes to gerrymandering, which all of them practice. They only care about how a particular jurisdiction votes. That black people vote overwhelmingly for Democrats doesn't even matter because voting propensity is known at the precinct level regardless of what color the people in the precinct are.

Had the South Carolina districts been constructed by Democrats using the exact same methods and boundaries to secure more Democrat seats, Kagan et alia would have been on the opposite side of this dispute and probably with most of the conservative faction on that side still since gerrymandering has always had more philosophical support on the right no matter the politics of the plaintiffs.

There isn't a way to fix gerrymandering- no matter what system you come up with, one party or the other will be favored simply because populations are not homogenous. It is far better to have the process open and under the control of the state legislators- you can at least target them by voting their asses out of office if you don't like it.

CJinPA said...

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the justices nominated by Democrats...

Is this new, "nominated by Democrats/Republicans"...? I never read that description before.

What motivated the change? The media have always been reluctant to to call liberal justices "liberal." Usually, it's "liberal-leaning."

My guess: The effort to delegitimize the Supreme Court is in full gear. They won't even ascribe opinions to ideology. They will now link them to raw politics.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

deepelemblues,

Ummmm... who wants to tell the very intelligent and knowledgeable leader of the court's left wing the practical political effect of 59 years of legislatively and judicially mandated black-majority congressional districts?

That's it. The Court has insisted on racial criteria being used in Congressional districting many, many times, always with a view to making districts with a "majority-minority." The stated purpose of this is to ensure that the minority in question can choose its own representative, never mind the others. And the implication of that stated purpose is that Blacks will always vote for Blacks.

This is, of course, music to the ears of Republicans, because corralling as many Blacks as possible into one district automatically "bleaches" all the surrounding ones. The result is generally that the Democrats get more Black representatives, but fewer representatives overall. It's a deeply cynical alliance, like the "Baptists and bootleggers" one during Prohibition.

Quaestor said...

Live by braindead party loyalty, die by braindead party loyalty.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Wow, Althouse has turned off moderation!

Skeptical Voter said...

Come to California--and see what efficient gerrymandering can do to create a one party state.

Quaestor said...

The corollary: The party that lives by racialist pandering, dies by racialist pandering.

Read it and weep, Vicky, Inga, LLR Chuck, et al.

Yancey Ward said...

"I agree with Kagan that gerrymandering is wrong, that it undermines voting rights, and I'd like to see more effort to take politics out of the redistricting process"

Fine- now propose a system that doesn't favor one party or the other. Even if you had an algorithm that drew the boundaries interior to a state that were straight intersecting lines that were set to meet the equal population of districts (districts not on the state border would all be rectangles), this would favor one party over the other by simple accident every single time, and the party that benefitted would fight to preserve to it and the other would fight to replace it.

The only reasonable, democratic (small d), and workable system is to have the drawers of the boundaries up for re-election on a regular basis.

Yancey Ward said...

"Wow, Althouse has turned off moderation!"

The first rule of "Off Moderation Club" is.......

Quaestor said...

"Wow, Althouse has turned off moderation!"

No, read her pinned admonition below "Leave your comment". All we can surmise is that moderation is currently deferred for some well-known visitors.

Luke Lea said...

If this is about drawing lines to insure minority majority Congressional districts vs. spreading the minorities around evenly across the state, then the latter is clearly best for the minorities concerned. Why? For two reasons:

First, in majority minority districts it is virtually a forgone conclusion that the incumbent is a minority in a safe seat, which means he has no powerful incentive to actually represent the interests of his constituents (on issues of trade and immigration for instance) as opposed to the special interests who finance his campaigns.

And second, because when minorities are spread around fairly evenly in every district across a state, Congressmen across the state have a powerful motive to represent the true interests of their minority constituents, whose support will mean the difference between re-election and defeat in a close election.

DanTheMan said...

When you do it: Odious.
When we do it: Justice.

Quaestor said...

"Wow, Althouse has turned off moderation!"

I've often thought a useful application of AI would be an application that could relieve the onerous task of moderating social media. The pre-Musk Twitter used a very stupid and biased AI to shadow-ban conservative opinions and truthful information in favor of fascist propaganda. Musk's intent to pull the plug on that vile robot was the reason he has been so vilified by the left.

Temujin said...

Haven't Democrats been divvying up districts by race for decades now? If you want to eliminate this practice, then eliminate gerrymandering altogether.

Let's just draw lines through the states divvying up by population, trying to 'even out' the more populous areas without regard to which party or the color of the majority of the citizens in any given district. Why should that be taken into account in the first place? Working by the numbers only- without regard to party affiliation, race, gender, or religion- create districts in each state.

What? We cannot do that? Because we need to arrange by party and race?

Well then...what's with the complaining?

MSOM said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sebastian said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sebastian said...

"this "odious" practice of sorting citizens, built on racial generalizations and exploiting racial divisions"

Huh? I mean, WTF? What is prog politics these days but an effort to "exploit racial divisions" on the basis of "racial generalizations"?

mindnumbrobot said...

Kagan warned that the majority opinion sends a message to lawmakers and mapmakers to use race as a proxy to achieve partisan ends. 'And so this "odious" practice of sorting citizens, built on racial generalizations and exploiting racial divisions, will continue,' she wrote.

I can't believe she actually wrote that.

Joe Smith said...

What bizzaro world are we living in?

Leland said...

From SCOTUS Blog on the 2023 Affirmative Action ruling:
Justice Sonia Sotomayor – a graduate of Princeton and Yale Law School who once called herself “the perfect affirmative action baby” – dissented, in an opinion that was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Sotomayor emphasized that the majority’s decision had rolled “back decades of precedent and momentous progress” and “cement[ed] a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society.”

Why is seems Sotomayor used race as a proxy to achieve partisan ends. Wonder why WaPo and NYT didn't demand she recuse herself from that ruling and today's ruling?

Let me know when SCOTUS rules that the Census Bureau and other government agencies can no longer inquire about the race of an individual, until then this "odious" practice of sorting citizens, built on racial generalizations and exploiting racial divisions, will continue.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

And so this "odious" practice of sorting citizens, built on racial generalizations and exploiting racial divisions, will continue'

If I didn't know better I'd think she was upset at Democrats constructing "minority majority black" voting maps, like they always do. Sticking to the conventional prog-regressive script, Kagan is only upset when Republicans infringe on the Democrat's inherent right to infringe on rights. I LOL at this ruling.

PM said...

Alinsky, Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy.

mccullough said...

It’s easy to look up by precinct the voting patterns of the precinct.

That’s not a generalization. That’s a fact.

Kagan fancied herself as a bridge builder and Dems touted her as such.

She’s not a bridge builder. She’s a sore loser.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

I need the other side of the story here. WaPo is too one-sided.

RideSpaceMountain said...

"If you don't agree that this "odious" practice of sorting citizens, built on racial generalizations and exploiting racial divisions, should continue...THEN YOU AIN'T BLACK!"

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

Also - Often, reality is often blacks and whites self-segregate.
I do not like it. I want a mixed colorblind society.

Both sides often hurt this cause - but mostly the left like to keep blacks under-educated and on the leftwing plantation.

Big Mike said...

…we should demand better — of ourselves, of our political representatives, and most of all of this Court

Demand all you want, Dwarf. But when one ethnic group votes 9:1 or more for a particular party how do you prove that the motive was racial and not political?

Demands are easy. I demand self-shoveling show in the winter. I demand self-mowing grass. I demand self-pulling weeds. For purposes of looking at a gerrymandering case how are my demands any less reasonable than Kagan’s?

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

Is DE&I (the alt-constitution) silent on "gerrymandering"?

Is Kagan proselytizing from the bench?

So many questions going unasked.

GRW3 said...

The Democrats have finally figured out that driving to majority minority districts didn't work out like they planned. A key component of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the demand that the (basically) Confederate states redistrict to ensure, not just favor, districts minorities will win, no matter what. I grew up in one such district, which was fortunately filled by LBJ protege Barbara Jordan. I remember her appearance at the Democrat state senate district convention. I was sure she was headed for the Supreme Court. It was unfortunate that her health failed and she left Congress. She was eventually replaced by Sheila Jackson Lee, one of the cohort of underwhelming minorities pushed forward by the new progressive Democratic party (post McGovern) that managed to push all the normies to the Republican Party. I suspect the architects of that change didn't expect their picks to last so long to get embarrassing seniority in Congress. The new Democratic Party is also responsible for all the awful choices for blue city and county governments.

Hubert the Infant said...

This year, Harvard sponsored these official affinity group graduation ceremonies:
Affinity Celebration Honoring Graduates with Disabilities
Affinity Celebration Honoring Indigenous Graduates
Affinity Celebration Honoring First Gen Next Gen Graduates
Affinity Celebration Honoring Asian, Asian American, Pacific Islander, Desi-American Graduates
Affinity Celebration Honoring Black Graduates
Lavender Celebration Honoring LGBTQ+ Graduates
Affinity Celebration Honoring Latinx Graduates
Affinity Celebration Honoring Arab Graduates

Which side is responsible for sorting people based on immutable characteristics?

Enigma said...

Political division by zero: Focusing on race is essential AND focusing on race is odious.

The left has reversed every single "liberal" position they espoused from the 1950s to the recent past. They now govern only through bribery, handouts, and pandering to interest groups. This is nothing more than primal tribalism and government-by-mafia.

Real American said...

"…said the majority got it 'seriously wrong'.... Kagan warned that the majority opinion sends a message to lawmakers and mapmakers to use race as a proxy to achieve partisan ends. 'And so this "odious" practice of sorting citizens, built on racial generalizations and exploiting racial divisions, will continue,' she wrote."

Kagan is making her own facts since the record doesn't support her opinion. The Court held that the legislature is sorting the citizens based on their partisanship and since large swaths of black folks are Democrats they're affected. The legislature was not looking to race as a proxy for partisan affiliation and it was clearly erroneous to simply assume its motivation was racial solely by looking at the result.

That's what the racial left does. They see a result and assume racism must be the motive. No proof of racism is needed. My guess is that the left believes this due mostly due to projection. They're race-obsessed and their racism motivates what they do. That's why most of woke/CRT politics is all about providing cover for and excusing their own racism. They believe the right acts that way, too. They're always calling us racists and their garbage opinions are all the evidence needed. In this case, there was no evidence beyond woke "expert" opinion to support their arguments.

dbp said...

"Elena Kagan, writing for the justices nominated by Democrats..."

In other words, Elena Kagan, writing for the three dissenting justices.

loudogblog said...

The problem that the liberals have is that they're equating race with political affiliation. They're assuming that the Democrats will always be good for black Americans and that Republicans will always be bad for black Americans. (Which is not the case.)

Original Mike said...

Perhaps AI could be tasked with creating district limits using neutral rules. Lord knows people won't do it.

Aggie said...

I confess that I struggle to distinguish between race-driven and politics-driven gerrymandering, in this case, because black voters seem to vote with such overwhelming regularity along Democrat lines. The two are one-and-the-same, aren't they? But: What happens to these cases when blacks start to increasingly vote for Republicans, assuming it starts happening in numbers significant enough to disrupt the status quo?

I think the argument as it stands with the 3 dissenters is hypocritically specious and along firmly political lines, in the face of race quotas and the determined efforts to prolong the affirmative action agenda in college admissions. The Supreme Court weighed in on this too - but I notice they left plenty of wiggle room. Now, lets do DEI at the institutional level.

mccullough said...

Kagan means well. When you pack blacks into a district they will vote for an Omar or Maxine Waters. If you mix them in with majority of whites democrats, then you get an Ivy League educated white woman who votes the same way as the CBC but doesn’t embarrass Kagan.

Yancey Ward said...

"Perhaps AI could be tasked with creating district limits using neutral rules. Lord knows people won't do it."

Sure, we will get neutral Silicon Valley right on the task of creating such an AI, and you will know it is neutral because they will tell you it is neutral- even the AI will tell you this so you can believe it.

Original Mike said...

"Sure, we will get neutral Silicon Valley right on the task of creating such an AI, …"

Yeah, I know. But I continue to (naively) believe that non-tortuous, natural boundaries can be defined mathematically.

Hassayamper said...

Sure, we will get neutral Silicon Valley right on the task of creating such an AI, and you will know it is neutral because they will tell you it is neutral- even the AI will tell you this so you can believe it.

You can also be sure the George Soros AG's and DA's will try to put you in prison for fifty years if you file any official objections to it. What could be more trustworthy than that?

Howard said...

Congratulations, you are achieving the return of Jim Crow. You owe it all to the arrogance of Barracks Whose Seine Obama and the ambition of Hillary Clinton.

PrimoStL said...

Howard said, "Congratulations, you are achieving the return of Jim Crow. You owe it all to the arrogance of Barracks Whose Seine Obama and the ambition of Hillary Clinton."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.thecollegefix.com/syracuse-professor-bars-non-black-students-from-private-workshop/

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/california-just-created-ebony-alert-find-missing-black-children-rcna119679?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma&taid=6525c268657bfc000190af68&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

https://www.thecollegefix.com/mit-president-defends-blacks-only-dorm-positive-selection-not-exclusionary/

https://archive.is/e9Jzt

https://www.campusreform.org/article/umass-campuses-offering-segregated-lavender-graduations-lgbtq-identifying-students/25248

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2212866


Hmmm, doesn't look like whoever they are need any help segregating from little old us.


Josephbleau said...

In Illinois they gerrymander for party affiliation, not race, there is just a high correlation between race and voting pattern. They try to put democrats at 53 pct in as many districts as possible. This results in connecting the University towns with a smaller number of farm people, and connecting the south side of Chicago to rural towns by having a district go down an interstate highway for 50 miles.

The worst thing for them is to have a district that votes 60 pct democrat, what a waste. 53 pct democrat is really too high, as they could make it 50 pct and then make up fake votes in close cases ( yes my child, there is voter fraud in Illinois.)

I would like to see a rule that each district must contain only four linear boundaries, each the leg of a right angle, and each bearing in a cardinal compass direction. Approximating the US as a plane of course. Why would democrats object?

Because there is no sharp boundary between voter preference communities, there is always a gradient, so using rectangular districts you could not maximize the number of 53 pct democrat districts by using weird necks to soak up outlier populations.

Leland said...

Blogger Howard said...
Congratulations, you are achieving the return of Jim Crow.


By “you”, I guess you mean the Democrat appointed Justices concerned about cementing a rule of colorblindness in reading the Constitution. Those Justices want us to make decision based on skin color, as Democrats did when they passed Jim Crow laws.

n.n said...

Kagan warned...

Affirmative discrimination

Some, Select [Black] Lives Matter

Illegal aliens/immigration reform

Political Congruence ("=")

Planned Parenthood, Parent/hood

Progressivism

Diversity, Equivocation, Indoctrination (IED)

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

Gerrymandering is only good when the corrupt left can do it.

Mikey NTH said...

It is remarkable how people are surprised that in politics people act politically. Even political animals such as judges nominated by politicians.

RCOCEAN II said...

The only sensible opinion in the whole mess, was Justice Thomas' opinion:

The Constitution provides courts no power to draw districts,let alone any standards
by which they can attempt to do so. And, it does not authorize courts to engage in the race-based reasoning that has come to dominate our voting-rights precedents. It is well
past time for the Court to return these political issues where they belong—the political branches.


Reading the Alioto and Kagan opinions, you'd think they were written by Althouse commenters. The people here don't really care what the constitution says or what the law says, they just like the result or dislike it based on personal politics. And the justices are the same in these gerrymandering/political cases. If it helps the R's - Roberts and his fellow R's come up with some BS that decides it that way. If it helps the D's - Kagan and fellow D's do the same.

There is a difference between the R and D SCOTUS judges though. The D's will vote the liberal/left position NO MATTER WHAT. They will ignore precedent, the will ignore the consitution, they will ignore case law, they will ignore common sense, because they don't care. They are results orientated. The liberal/left position is good, the Conservative one bad.

Roberts and the Conservatives OTOH will only go so far to enforce conservative/Republican dogma. The believe in the constitution, Precedent and case law. But they won't follow through and be "radical" like Thomas, because they really just want to uphold the status quo. Notice that Roe v. wade was only overturned by 5-4, and because it was such an awful judge made piece of judicial overreach.

RCOCEAN II said...

Trump saved us from a Kagan-Garland dominated SCOTUS. Imagine the D's having the 6-3 majority. My God.

Of course even under Hillary, your money would've been safe Republicans. Its not like garland would've ruled rich people had to pay 1/2 wealth to the Government under some obscure constitiutal clause. So, you wouldn't have cared.

But people who are actually "Conservative" should thank Trump every day for getting elected and putting three half-way reasonable Justices on the Court.

boatbuilder said...

I admit I laughed at "...writing for the justices nominated by Democrats..."

Astute political commentary--in the WaPo!!

Probably not meant as humor. But funny just the same.

Josephbleau said...

"Of course even under Hillary, your money would've been safe Republicans. Its not like garland would've ruled rich people had to pay 1/2 wealth to the Government under some obscure constitiutal clause. So, you wouldn't have cared. "

Marshall made the Supreme Court the most powerful branch of the government, because they can cast any law or action as not constitutional. Even if an amendment is passed they can decide your case does not improve according to the new amendment.

The only relief to a renegade president or Supreme Court is impeachment, followed by the election or appointment of a non-renegade person.

Smilin' Jack said...

"Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel A. Alito noted many predominantly Black precincts in Charleston were moved out of one district and into another."

South Carolina is 64% White. So with complete integration there would be no “predominantly Black” precincts. Justice demands segregation now, segregation forever! Or at least until the Great Replacement is complete.

Jupiter said...

It would be a simple matter, to devise a geometrical method of dividing a region into rectangular voting districts, using the voter density determined by the last census. It would please no one.

Jupiter said...

So we are left with the evident conclusion, that all interested parties agree, that the boundaries of voting districts should be determined on the basis of non-geometric criteria. The dispute is over which non-geometric criteria should be employed. And whose ox should therefore be gored.

traditionalguy said...

The acceptance between blacks and whites is nearly complete now. That beautiful fact has the Dem Crime Syndicate scared shitless. They are pouring trillions into propaganda to restart race devision anyway they can. But the young folks ignore them.

So false Jew hate is all they have left.

Big Mike said...

Elena Kagan, writing for the justices nominated by Democrats...

Elena Kagan, writing for herself and the two affirmative action judges.

stlcdr said...

This has been a thing for a long time to elect a black democrat, Clyburn. It has an unfortunate side effect of self segregation by black people in South Carolina, believing that only Clyburn can represent them.

It is frustrating when all the news media of squealing democrats is about Republican gerrymandering, where the only experience I have seen of it is the democrats in SC. But it seems this is ok as long as it’s done on political lines and not racial. So, sarcastically, what’s the big deal?

dbp said...

ALITO, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which THOMAS, GORSUCH, KAVANAUGH, and BARRETT, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., and KAVANAUGH, J., filed concurring opinions. ROBERTS, C. J., filed an opinion
concurring in the judgment. BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., filed
a dissenting opinion.

This was a 6-3 decision.

Tina Trent said...

Here in Georgia, the GOP and black elected officials work together during redistricting because our configuration of geography, demographics, and "who benefits?" lends itself heavily to creating majority black districts. The people on the outside looking in are white Democrats/liberals, and non-black racial minorities: Hispanic and the enormously diverse exurbs where, for decades, the feds supersized legal and illegal immigration AND refugee immigration as one of 11 national refugee hubs (Chambodia, to use the crude nickname).

Of course, every election, there's still the relentless NGO-subsidized ritual of claiming discrimination against blacks through gerrymandering. But everyone knows the exact opposite is true, and the shared goals of black elected officials and the GOP in divvying up voters only grows stronger as other ethnic minorities take over the most desirable Democratic real estate.

You can see this pattern in cities like NYC, LA, Chicago...here it's more visible statewide because metro Atlanta is so huge, and expanding.

Tina Trent said...

Howard, I would pay to watch a cage fight between your ignorance and your naivety.

Who would win?

Greg the Class Traitor said...

A plaintiff’s failure to submit an alternative map should be interpreted by courts as an implicit concession that the plaintiff cannot draw a map that undermines the legislature’s defense.

This. 1000x this.

If you can't provide an alternative map that does what the legislature is saying it's trying to do, while not doing the thing you say they were actually trying to do, and shouldn't have done, then you are full of shit.

If you can provide the map, then they are full of shit.

Put up, or shut up

Greg the Class Traitor said...

The beatings are harsh, but well deserved

Dr. Kosuke Imai. The report of the Challengers’ first expert, Dr. Kosuke Imai, provides no support for the decision below because Dr. Imai made no effort to disentangle race from politics. ... The Challengers assert that these maps prove that race drove the State’s redistricting process because the average District 1 in these simulations contained a higher BVAP than the District 1 in the Enacted Plan.
...
Dr. Imai’s algorithm produced maps without requiring that District 1 comply with the legislature’s asserted aim of ensuring that District 1 remain a relatively safe Republican seat. The effect of Dr. Imai’s omission can be seen by looking at the Democratic vote share (measured by the results in the 2020 Presidential election) in the versions of District 1 that his simulations produced. President Biden’s vote share in the average District 1 in Dr. Imai’s maps was significantly higher than his vote share in the version of District 1 in the Enacted Plan. ... District 1 would have voted for the Democratic nominee in 2020 in 91% of Dr. Imai’s simulations. Ibid. Because Dr. Imai’s model fails to track the considerations that governed the legislature’s redistricting decision, it is irrelevant that the racial makeup of District 1 in his maps differs from that in the version of the district in the Enacted Plan.

So, tl;dr: You can't prove that a GOP gerrymander was a "racial gerrymander" by providing maps that are pro-Dem.

Or, to quote Alito: Dr. Imai’s conspicuous failure to control for party preference is alone sufficient to discredit any reliance on his report,

Greg the Class Traitor said...

The Challengers seek to excuse their failures to disentangle race and politics by arguing that South Carolina raised a partisan-gerrymandering defense for the first time during the trial, but this argument rests on the implausible premise that the Challengers were unaware of the legislature’s partisan concerns during the mapmaking process.

IOW, The Challengers sought to argue that they're not corrupt liars, they're just morons. The reply from SCOTUS?

That doesn't work

Greg the Class Traitor said...

Unlike Dr. Imai, Dr. Ragusa attempted to disentangle race from politics, but as we will explain, his analysis has at least two serious defects. First, he failed to account for two key mapmaking factors: contiguity and compactness. Second, he used an inferior method of measuring a precinct’s partisan leanings.


Ok.
1: If you're going to complain about a map that breaks up a city, then you damn well need to include contiguity and compactness in your metrics
2: When your "partisanship measure" is "total votes for Biden", rather than "net votes for Biden", everything else you do is garbage. Precincts do not all have the same number of votes, pretending that they do just shows your'e either dishonest, or a moron

Greg the Class Traitor said...

Despite its length, the dissent boils down to six main points. None is valid. First, the dissent suggests that clear-error review is a perfunctory task, see post, at 10, but that is not so....
Does the dissent really think that all district court findings on the question of racial discrimination are virtually immune from reversal?

They do, when the lower court goes their way. They dont', when the lower court goes against them. IOW, they're full of shit

Second, the dissent attacks the proposition that in redistricting cases the “good faith of [the] state legislature must be presumed.” Miller, 515 U. S., at 915. But, as the citation to Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the Court in Miller reveals, that presumption is an established feature of our case law

Third, the dissent claims that our decision is inconsistent with Cooper, but the dissent’s argument is based on an imaginary version of that opinion....
Under such circumstances, if a sophisticated plaintiff bringing a racial-gerrymandering claim cannot provide an alternative map, that is most likely because such a map cannot be created. It would be clear error for the factfinder to overlook this shortcoming.

Fourth, the dissent argues that the Challengers were blindsided when the State argued at trial that its map was
drawn to achieve a political goal.

No one can actually be that stupid, not even Sotomayor.
And, as Alito pointed out, the trial went on long enough that if the "experts" had been able to create such a map, they would have had time to do so

Finally, the dissent thinks that the State must have used racial data because that data, in its view, is more accurate than political data in predicting future votes.

This would be the "we are racist pigs, therefore you must be racist pigs, too" attack

Greg the Class Traitor said...

'And so this "odious" practice of sorting citizens, built on racial generalizations and exploiting racial divisions, will continue,' she wrote.

What an odious dirtbag of a liar.

If they were moved because of skin color, rather than because of the way they voted, then the Challengers would have produced an alternative map where District 1 had more black voters, but was still a GOP lock.

But the Challengers didn't produce such a map, and no on since then has produced such a map, because such a map doesn't exist.

Because what teh SC map-makers did was pure political gerrymandering

When the Democrats were doing it, SCOTUS ruled that it was entirely legitimate. And that means that from now to the end of tiem, it will always be legitimate when Republicans do it

Greg the Class Traitor said...

My final note:
the story line from the Democrats was that their "experts" didn't produce an alternative map that "showed" that the State was discriminating based on race, because they didn't hear until the trial what the State's political goals were with the redistricting/.

But it's been years since the trial.

And in all that time, no one has produced such an alternative map.

And the reason for that is because every single thing the Democrats say about this case is a lie.