My prediction is that the Supreme Court will ultimately tell the lower Federal courts to simply stay out of redistricting. The Federal courts should never have entered this thicket in the sixties as this is clearly an area solely for the political branches.
Well, That Didn’t Take Long
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Robert Bork’s view was that you could make an argument for some intervention on the basis of the ‘guarantee’ clause, but the courts grew absurdly intrusive. The same pattern was manifest in the courts’ interventions in school administration.
This is a double edged sword: if Greg Abbott can restrict Texas with impunity, then Gavin Newsom can redistrict California with impunity. I don’t understand why there isn’t some sort of law or regulation that would require redistricting to be apolitical and based solely local population density. Drawing district lines from a county in one area up through a county located a large distance away just to ensure one political party will dominate is manifestly unfair. But I write those words as a person completely ignorant of restricting politics, and I am sure someone will tell me how naive and wrong I am. 😞 Every time I think on these frustrating things, I simply row an extra kilometer on my rowing machine. It’s like politics: I do a lot of distance but get nowhere. 😉
If Trump’s legacy is nothing more than his appointments to the Supreme Court that seems to be resulting in rulings that force the judicial oligarchs to get back in their lanes, that is a great legacy. I can’t think of anything less democratic than appointed for life black robed star chamber judges removing our ability to make these decisions for ourselves.
California had a bogus ‘non-partisan commission’. The referendum in California was to set that aside for the time being.
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A federal court in New Jersey once invalidated a district map wherein every district was within 2% of the mean in residential population. Here’s your problem: judges are a**holes.
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Again, a rule-driven process with little discretion could be applied, but you have to drop your insistence that the population of every district be within 2% of the mean.
If I am correct that the Constitution states that congressional districts are the sole responsibility of the state legislatures, then every commission, every judicial ruling, every law passed by Congress mandating minority majority districts is blatantly unconstitutional.
If I am correct that the Constitution states that congressional districts are the sole responsibility of the state legislatures,
It does not say that. It implies shared responsibility with Congress. The whole area is a constitutional mess, which is why the Court was unwise to get involved in redistricting in the sixties.