The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday upheld Texas Republicans’ new GOP-heavy congressional map, handing the party a key victory as it heads into what is predicted to be a bruising midterm cycle.
In a 6-3 ruling, the court reversed a lower court’s finding that the map was designed to weaken the voting power of racial minorities. All three liberal justices dissented. While not the final decision in the case, it solidifies the map through at least the November midterms.
In a short, unsigned order, the conservative majority said the lower court had failed to presume legislative good faith and had instead relied on “ambiguous direct and circumstantial evidence.” They also argued that it was too close to an election to abandon the new map. The candidate filing period in Texas is set to end on Monday.
“The District Court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections,” the majority wrote.
[…]
The court’s three dissenting justices defended the lower court’s rationale, writing that plaintiffs had shown that Texas “largely divided its citizens along racial lines to create its new pro-Republican House map.” They also slammed their colleagues’ assertion that it was too close to an election to strike down the map, saying that if that were true, any state wanting to pass a “blatantly unconstitutional” map could simply pass it months before the election, as Texas did.
“Today’s order disserves the millions of Texans whom the District Court found were assigned to their new districts based on their race,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent joined by Justices Kentanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor.
I was out last night and I’m up late writing this, and I just don’t have the energy at this point to work up a froth over something we all could have anticipated. You’re telling me that the SCOTUS majority acted like partisan hacks and did Donald Trump and the Republican Party a solid? Who could have ever imagined that? I will just note again that this map is based on some very frothy assumptions about the electorate and Latino voters in particular that are not looking very solid right now. The best short term revenge would be hold most of the targeted seats, maybe even flip CD15, and make the whole cursed exercise one of utter futility. Your job is to channel that anger into action. Not much else to say. The Lone Star Project and Democracy Docket have more.
The real evil is the partisan gerrymander. Alas, the SCOTUS has “blessed” it.
In a two-party system, if one party seeks maximum advantage doing it, the other party is compelled by expediency to do the same where it has the ability to do so. Sort of like a joint race to the bottom.
As for the race-based legal challenge, it’s depressing as well.
The nonsense of Hispanic(s) being a race continues unabated, as does the notion that the lumping together of minority “groups” into a “coalition” is anything but an artifact.
Can you name one person that actually identifies as a “coalitionist”?
—
coalition district = a district in which two or more minority groups (say, Blacks
and Hispanics) can together form a majority and elect a candidate of their choice.