The Supreme Court is allowing California to use its new congressional map for this year’s midterm election, clearing the way for the state’s gerrymandered districts as Democrats and Republicans continue their fight for control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The state’s voters approved the redistricting plan last year as a Democratic counterresponse to Texas’ new GOP-friendly map, which President Trump pushed for to help Republicans hold on to their narrow majority in the House.

And in an unsigned order released Wednesday, the high court’s majority denied an emergency request by the California’s Republican Party to block the redistricting plan. The state’s GOP argued that the map violated the U.S. Constitution because its creation was mainly driven by race, not partisan politics. A lower federal court rejected that claim.

  • ceenote@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    I’d hope this will bring us closer to real legal barriers to gerrymandering, if hope hadn’t been beaten out of me by now.

    • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      The weird thing is this CA law removed anti-gerrymandering laws. We had a legal barrier here in CA, but this law was to remove that barrier so we could counter TX. It sucked voting for it.

      • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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        13 hours ago

        Yeah this was definitely a race for the bottom, but unfortunately a necessary one. Michelle Obama’s idea of “when they go low, we go high” only works if your opponent has a miniscule amount of morals or shame.

      • Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        From what I’ve read the barrier wasn’t actually removed, so much as putting it on pause for a time. This map will only be in place until 2030 when the maps were going to be redrawn anyway, at which point the new map will be created using the standard anti-gerrymandering method.

      • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
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        13 hours ago

        It’s not weird if you start with the premise of Democrats being just as dirty and underhanded as Republicans. Both these private organizations benefit from this. The people, not so much.

        • gustofwind@lemmy.world
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          13 hours ago

          It’s weird because Dems have been the ones making all the anti gerrymandering laws lmao

          Takes a very low iq to understand both sides being the same

          • Serinus@lemmy.world
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            8 hours ago

            DON’T VOTE BLUE. DONT VOTE BLUE. DONT VOTE BLUE.

            Oh, is that not subtle enough? Sorry, I meant BOTH SIDES and EVERYTHING REPUBLICANS DO IS THE DEMS FAULT.

            I hope that last one wasn’t too long. Was it bad to mention Republicans at all?

          • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
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            12 hours ago

            Of course because it’s good PR, and then later when they don’t want to be constricted by such rules, they just write new laws to nullify it.

            The result is effectively the same as if they’d never passed these anti-gerrymandering laws in the first place, yet the sycophants eat this stuff up despite getting absolutely nothing from it.

            Don’t forget that the Texas legislature was only able to gerrymander due to Texas Dems showing up and giving them a quorum.

        • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          Democrats vote for something that should not benefit them and benefits the people as a whole. Republicans do something that makes a change necessary. Democrats vote to TEMPORARILY undo that benefit for the people with a time-based reenacting of the benefit.

          You: BOTH SIDES!!

          Democrats try to vote for ranked choice voting in some states. Republicans push to outlaw that for the entire country.

          You: BOTH SIDES!!

          • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
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            10 hours ago

            Its funny you menting RCV because that was on the ballot here in Oregon last election and it failed by a 15 point margin because it got little support outside of citizen-lead efforts. State Dems of course want credit for putting it on the ballot despite abandoning their efforts after that and allowing disinformation to run rampant in the weeks and months leading up to election day. Dems have controlled the state for generations now, so why change a system that works for them?