Pa. gerrymandering case: State Supreme Court releases new congressional map for 2018 elections – By Jonathan Lai & Liz Navratil (philly.com) / Feb 19 2018
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday released a new congressional district map that would upend familiar boundaries, renumbering districts across the state and giving a potential boost to Democrats in the 2018 House elections.
Under the court’s new plan, the congressional districts would more closely align with county lines, with only 13 counties being split between two or three districts. By contrast under the most recent map, enacted in 2011, more than twice as many counties were split among multiple districts.
But the fight might not be over yet. Drew Crompton, chief of staff to Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati (R., Jefferson) said Monday evening attorneys were working on an appeal that could be filed in federal court this week, possibly as early as Tuesday.
“The Remedial Plan is superior or comparable to all plans submitted by the parties, the intervenors, and amici, by whichever Census-provided definition one employs,” the court wrote in its order. It also wrote that the plan is “superior or comparable” to the various map proposals on the average compactness of districts and that each district in the map has an equal population, plus or minus one person.
Philadelphia remains divided into three congressional districts, with most of it split between the Second and Third Districts. A portion of South Philadelphia is drawn into the Fifth district based in Delaware County — a substitute of sorts for U.S. Rep. Bob Brady’s First Congressional District. That number instead moves north to Bucks County.
The map would give Democrats a significant boost in their push to take control of Congress, adding several Democratic-leaning seats and making others that favor the GOP much more competitive.
In Southeast Pennsylvania, for example, Democrats currently have three representatives from Philadelphia, while Republicans have three in the suburbs. Under the new plan, Democrats would be favored to win five of those seats and the sixth would be a virtual toss up, according to election analysts.
Local Districts Under the Supreme Court Plan
Local congressional districts under the 2011 map drawn by Pennsylvania’s Republican-led legislature split 28 counties into several districts, including Montgomery County, which had parts of the Second, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and 13th Districts. The map released on Monday by the state Supreme Court, which invalidated the the 2011 map, centers Montgomery County in the Fourth District. Only 13 counties are split in the new plan, and Bucks, Chester, and Delaware Counties are each entirely within a single district.
A seat based in the Lehigh Valley would become more evenly balanced, and in Western Pennsylvania, where there is now one safe Democratic seat amid a sea of red, one of the new districts would be much more competitive, by incorporating more of Allegheny County.
President Trump would have won 10 congressional districts under the new plan, two fewer than he actually won in 2016 under the most recent map. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would have won the remaining eight districts under the new map, though one district is so close as to be essentially a toss-up.
Under the new plan, Trump would have won seven districts and Clinton each would have won five districts with at least 55 percent of the two-party vote. In the competitive range, Trump and Clinton would have each won three districts with margins between 50 and 55 percent of the two-party vote.
In one win for local Democrats, the fourth district is centered on Montgomery County. Critics of the map adopted in 2011 often pointed to the county, which was split into five districts and had no member of congress living in the county. Bucks and Chester Counties also receive districts based largely on their boundaries.
“It’s a big win for Montgomery County and Delco,” said Philadelphia-based political consultant Larry Ceisler. “Montgomery County, in the past few redistrictings, has had three or four members of Congress.” He adds that it “means a lot” for a county to have a “go-to member of Congress.”
The new map comes after weeks of political and legal fighting following the state high court’s ruling that the map adopted in 2011 was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
Gov. Wolf, a Democrat, said in a statement that he applauds the court’s work “and I respect their effort to remedy Pennsylvania’s unfair and unequal congressional elections.”
Democratic Lt. Governor Mike Stack similarly welcomed the court’s map: “I urge all parties now to end the defense of gerrymandered districts and come together to find a new way to create state and federal legislative districts that are free from the taint of partisanship.”
But don’t expect the map to end the battle.
Even before Monday’s order, Republican lawmakers were vowing to challenge in federal court whatever map the court selected. The decision to take the mapmaking into the court’s own hands, they argued, usurps the line-drawing power that the U.S. Constitution gives to state legislatures. And the court did not give them enough time to enact a new map.
“This Court recognized that the primary responsibility for drawing congressional districts rested squarely with the legislature, but we also acknowledged that, in the eventuality of the General Assembly not submitting a plan to the Governor, or the Governor not approving the General Assembly’s plan within the time specified, it would fall to this Court expeditiously to adopt a plan based upon the evidentiary record developed in the Commonwealth Court,” the per curiam order reads, adding that drawing a map is “a role which our Court has full constitutional authority and responsibility to assume.”
The court notes in the order that all participants in the case had the opportunity to submit proposals and feedback, and it said that its plan “draws heavily upon the submissions.”
Last month, the state high court ruled the congressional map unconstitutional and ordered a new one drawn in time for the May 15 primary election. The previous map, the justices said, violated the state constitution’s guarantee that “elections shall be free and equal” by discriminating against Democratic voters, reducing their voting power in favor of Republicans.
Pennsylvania has an electorate that votes in about equal numbers for both political parties, making it a key battleground state in recent presidential elections. But Republicans consistently won the same 13 of the state’s 18 U.S. House seats under the previous map, even as voters elected former President Barack Obama and President Trump; U.S. Senators Bob Casey, a Democrat, and Pat Toomey, a Republican; former Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, and Gov. Wolf, a Democrat.
“An election corrupted by extensive, sophisticated gerrymandering and partisan dilution of votes is not ‘free and equal,’ ” Justice Debra McCloskey Todd wrote in the opinion for the majority.
On Monday, the court also approved a revised nomination petition calendar for candidates running for U.S. House. Under that calendar, the nomination petition period runs from Feb. 27 through March 20. That keeps the primary election scheduled for May 15.
The new district lines have the potential to impact politics in Pennsylvania and at the national level, as Democrats attempt to capitalize on favorable political trends to try to regain control of the U.S. House.
For weeks, Republicans have attacked some of the justices as partisan and accused the court of legislating from the bench, seeking one method after another of blocking the order from taking effect.
Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati (R., Jefferson) and House Speaker Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny) requested that the U.S. Supreme Court intervene but were rejected by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. They also attempted to get a state Supreme Court justice disqualified from the case by attacking him as biased, but he declined to recuse himself, saying he had not crossed any lines. Scarnati has refused to comply with court orders to share data intended to help the justices draw a map, and a rank-and-file Republican lawmaker is seeking cosponsors to sign onto an attempt to impeach the court’s Democratic justices.
As those fights raged, the deadline loomed: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had given the Republican-controlled legislature less than three weeks to draw a new map and send it to Wolf, a Democrat. Pennsylvania’s congressional map is normally enacted as legislation, meaning it passes through the state House and Senate, then goes to the governor for his signature or veto. When it became clear the legislature had run out of time, Scarnati and Turzai drew their own map and sent it directly to Wolf — a move criticized by some who said they didn’t have the power to act on behalf of the entire legislature, without a vote taking place.
Wolf rejected that map last week, joining a growing consensus that the map was still a partisan gerrymander.
With that avenue blocked, participants in the case scrambled to finalize their own map proposals. Scarnati and Turzai stood by their map submission, while other participants submitted their own proposals.
In the days since, groups tied to the case have continued to fight. Sunday night, Scarnati and Turzai wrote to the state Supreme Court that it should accept their map, calling it “the best overall plan” and saying it creates the largest number of competitive districts. They also told the court that some of the maps should be rejected outright and accused Lt. Gov. Mike Stack and Senate Democrats, in their proposals, of attempting to gerrymander in their own favor, saying those maps were “deliberately drawn to pack Republican voters into a limited number of uncompetitive districts and to cement a 10-8 Democratic majority.”
