The Supreme Court has cleared the way for California to use its new congressional map for this year's midterm election. Voters approved it as a Democratic counterresponse to Texas' new GOP-friendly map.

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.

  • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    12·
    8 hours ago

    It took two constitutional amendments to make states allow black people and women to vote. There’s another banning poll taxes and the like.

    https://www.usa.gov/voting-rights

    Most US laws on voting rely on those amendments for support. That’s why it’s only illegal to gerrymander if it disenfranchises minorities.

    • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
      1·
      7 hours ago

      There is nothing in the constitution directly disallowing extreme racial gerrymanders. Those are unlawful not because they’re unconditional, but because they’re prohibited by the voting rights act.

      Congress could very well have passed simple laws banning racial and gender disenfranchisement in federal elections. The amendments were necessary to impose a rule on sub-federal elections and to keep a mere majority from taking the franchise away.

      The US Constituon is neither very long nor hard to read, and it has oodles of text that Congress could invoke to ban the gerrymandering of congressional districts:

      US Constitution article 1 section 4:

      The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

      Article 4, section 4:

      The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,…

      14th amendment section 2:

      Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

      • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        7 hours ago

        There is nothing in the constitution directly disallowing extreme racial gerrymanders. Those are unlawful not because they’re unconditional, but because they’re prohibited by the voting rights act.

        Which is backed by the US constitution and in particular the 14th amendment. The “Equal Protection Clause” of the 14th amendment in particular is frequently cited in challenges to racial gerrymandering.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_v._Johnson

        • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
          1·
          5 hours ago

          SCOTUS rulings are not the constitution. While the country operated on the idea that a supreme court ruling was final law for a few decades, the Roberts court forever destroyed the idea of binding precedent when they discarded Roe v Wade.

          Racial gerrymandering is now effectively constitutional so long as there’s a fig leaf of partisanship. While SCOTUS could plausibly jump the other way in the future, Congress is literally the primary body of the US federal government, and has all the power they want to ban gerrymandering in house districts and plausibly even local jurisdictions.

          • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            4 hours ago

            Racial gerrymandering is now effectively constitutional so long as there’s a fig leaf of partisanship.

            Which is why… I’m saying… We need a constitutional amendment… to make it illegal outright to gerrymander.

            • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
              1·
              54 minutes ago

              I don’t mean to argue that an amendment wouldn’t work, or be the correct next-step. We just don’t need to wait for one, just like we didnt need one to pass a law making an officiated gay marriage legit in every state no matter what local laws say.

              It’s like SCOTUS reform. Sure, we should pass an amendment and enshrine the reform into a hard-to-revert form, but that shouldn’t stop us from defining good behavior and kicking Scalia to the curb.