Virginia Republicans lose in U.S. Supreme Court racial gerrymandering case
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed Republican legislators in Virginia a defeat, leaving in place a ruling that invalidated state electoral districts they drew because they weakened the clout of black voters in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The justices, in a 5-4 decision, sidestepped a ruling on the merits of the case. They instead found that the Republican-led state House of Delegates lacked the necessary legal standing to appeal a lower court ruling that had invalidated 11 state House districts for racial discrimination.
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, a Democrat and the state’s top law enforcement official, opposed the appeal and argued that the Republican legislators were not entitled to act on behalf of the state in the case. A new political map is being used for this year’s state elections.
“Virginia’s elections this fall will take place in fair, constitutional districts. It’s a good day for democracy in Virginia,” Herring wrote on Twitter.
The Supreme Court’s action let stand a 2018 ruling by a federal three-judge panel that the 11 districts all violated the rights of black voters to equal protection under the law under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
The state’s Republican-led House of Delegates “lacks authority to displace Virginia’s attorney general as representative of the state,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court’s majority.
“In short, Virginia would rather stop than fight on. One house of its bicameral legislature cannot alone continue the litigation against the will of its partners in the legislative process,” Ginsburg added.
The court was not split on ideological lines, with Ginsburg joined in the majority by fellow liberal justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor as well as two conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.
The case involved a hot topic for the Supreme Court: a practice called gerrymandering involving the manipulation of electoral district boundaries to marginalize a certain set of voters and increase the influence of others. In this case, the Republican legislators were accused of racial gerrymandering to disadvantage black voters.
In two other major cases from Maryland and North Carolina, the justices are considering whether courts can curb gerrymandering aimed at purely partisan advantage. They are due to rule in those cases by the end of this month.
At issue in the Virginia case was the state legislative map drawn by Republicans after the 2010 national census.
‘SEEDS CONFUSION’
The National Republican Redistricting Trust, a group that backs Republican efforts to redraw electoral districts, criticized the ruling.
“It seeds confusion into a volatile, evolving body of law that demands clarity just as the next redistricting cycle begins,” said Adam Kincaid, the group’s executive director.
New electoral maps will be drawn nationwide following the 2020 census.
Since the Virginia maps that were challenged in the case were drawn, Democrats have made gains in Virginia in both state and federal elections. The current governor, Ralph Northam, and Herring, both are Democrats. Northam has been involved in a racial controversy of his own this year after a racist photo from his 1984 medical school yearbook page surfaced.
“This is a welcome ruling from the Supreme Court - it’s like I’ve always said, voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around,” Northam said on Twitter.
Like other U.S. southern states, Virginia has a complicated racial history dating back to the era of slavery.
The voters who brought the legal challenge accused Republicans of packing black voters into certain state House districts to diminish their voting power and make surrounding districts more white and more likely to support Republicans.
Democrats have accused President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans in Virginia and other states of crafting such legislative maps in a way that crams black and other minority voters, who tend to favor Democratic candidates, into certain districts in order to reduce their overall sway in the state.
Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham
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A big win for democrats
Eh, still seems like they punted again.
We will need to see how the other cases play out.
The win was for America,
as proven by who voted for the decision.
Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan, Thomas and Gorsuch.
SCOTUS seems well and alive.
LMAO!
I am pinching myself over the fact that the liberal 4 actually split on something! You mean Stephen Breyer actually disagreed?
The SCOTUS has seen a lot of gerrymandering cases because of what the GOP post-2010 midterms.
It didn't start there:
"After the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, some states created "majority-minority" districts. This practice, also called "affirmative gerrymandering " , was supposed to redress historic discrimination and ensure that ethnic minorities would gain some seats and representation in government."
BTW
"Since the 1990s, however, gerrymandering based solely on racial data has been ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court under the Fourteenth Amendment, first in Shaw v. Reno (1993) and subsequently in Miller v. Johnson (1995)."
BUT
" In Hunt v. Cromartie (1999), the Supreme Court approved a racially focused gerrymandering of a congressional district on the grounds that the definition was not pure racial gerrymandering but instead partisan gerrymandering, which is constitutionally permissible."
I had to almost laugh at that article. The defence from the republicans in the state is that the map has been that way for a little while, so it should stay that way.
I could only SMH....
They were drawn in 2011 after the midterms and took effect in 2012, by the GOP. This was one of John Kasich's first actions after he attacked public unions.
Nonsense gerrymandering like this should not be allowed regardless of the party or traditional stupidity.
So democrats don't do things like that?
By claiming that it is OK because you believe that others did it to you have just invoked a Tu Toque logical fallacy. It's also known as the fallacy of hypocrisy.
Both are examples of extreme Democratic gerrymandering.........
One still exists in the Chicago area.
The other was corrected by court order to a Xmas tree shape, still a Dem stronghold but no longer gerrymandered according to race.
Thanks for asking/s
It's know as reality. Either party will do it if given the chance.
It's Illegal based on race (except when the feds did it in the mid 60's)/ legal for purely political reasons
Check out the Ohio 16th (mine) or the 4th.