U.S. Supreme Court justices divided in major voting rights case – By Andrew Chung (reuters.com) / Oct 3 2017
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Supreme Court justices on Tuesday appeared divided over whether to issue a ruling that would curb the ability of politicians to draw electoral districts purely on partisan lines in a major voting rights case out of Wisconsin.
Some of the conservative justices questioned whether Democratic voters challenging the maps drawn by Republicans in Wisconsin had legal standing to bring the case. But the potential swing vote, conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, asked tough questions of the state’s lawyers.
The liberal justices appeared more eager for the court to rule that partisan electoral maps could violate the U.S. Constitution. The justices heard about an hour of arguments in the case.
Wisconsin is appealing a lower court’s ruling that the electoral map devised by state Republicans had such extreme partisan aims that it violated the constitutional rights of voters.
The case is one of the biggest the court will decide in its new term that began on Monday and runs through June.
The court is considering the legality of partisan gerrymandering, the practice that began two centuries ago of manipulating boundaries of legislative districts to benefit one party and diminish another, and whether the Republicans who drew Wisconsin’s electoral map intended to repress the clout of Democratic voters.
Electoral maps sometimes concentrate voters who tend to favor the minority party into a small number of districts to reduce their statewide voting power – called packing – and distribute the rest of those voters in other districts in numbers too small to be a majority – called cracking.
The Supreme Court, which currently has a 5-4 conservative majority, for decades has been willing to invalidate state electoral maps on the grounds of racial discrimination but never those drawn simply for partisan advantage.
Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts raised concerns about the high court being forced to take on a supervisory role in approving or rejecting future state electoral maps.
“We will have to decide in every case whether the Democrats or the Republicans win,” Roberts said. “The intelligent man on the street is going to say, ‘That’s a bunch of baloney.’”
“That is going to cause very serious harm to the status and integrity of the decisions of this court,” Roberts added.
Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg raised concerns about the impact on voters if their votes do not matter because of partisan electoral maps that marginalize them.
“What incentive is there for a voter to exercise his vote?” she asked. “What becomes of the precious right to vote?”
Kennedy questioned whether the challengers had standing to bring the claim but also pressed the state’s lawyers, indicating that he may think the challengers have a claim under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The case gives the justices a chance to establish the first standards to gauge when electoral maps drawn to benefit one particular party violate the Constitution.
A federal three-judge panel ruled 2-1 last November that Wisconsin’s redistricting plan violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law and right to freedom of expression and association because of the extent to which it marginalized Democratic voters.
Challengers to the maps, a group of Democratic voters, said gerrymandering is getting more extreme due to increasingly precise voter data and mapmaking technology, leaving voters with no recourse but the courts. The Wisconsin Republicans argue that courts should have no say in disputes over partisan gerrymandering.
Wisconsin’s electoral map, drawn after the 2010 U.S. census, enabled Republicans to win a sizable majority of Wisconsin legislative seats despite losing the popular vote statewide to the Democrats. The party’s majority has since expanded.
Kennedy could decide the case’s outcome. In a 2004 ruling in another case, Kennedy parted with his conservative colleagues to suggest that if partisan gerrymandering goes too far, courts may have to step in, and that finding a “workable standard” might be possible.
State and federal legislative district boundaries are reconfigured after the U.S. government conducts a census every decade to make each one contain about same number of people. This redistricting typically is carried out by the party that controls the state legislature.
The Republican National Committee and several conservative groups have supported Wisconsin. Some prominent Republicans including current senator and 2008 presidential nominee John McCain, 1996 presidential nominee Bob Dole and Ohio Governor John Kasich have joined critics who argue that partisan gerrymandering can distort the democratic process.
Gerrymandering is named for Elbridge Gerry, a Massachusetts governor known for the practice in the 1810s.
PB/TK – Amazing after how many decades and how many court attempts, gerrymandering is alive and stretching the lines more then ever.
