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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Supreme Courts original sin in gerrymandering cases
Few matters capture the pathology of the Roberts Court more completely than the two Abbott v. Perez cases, a pair of identically named racial gerrymandering cases that the Supreme Court will hear on Tuesday.
The Perez cases are about partisan gamesmanship. In 2013, the state of Texas admitted in a brief filed in a federal court that their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Partys electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats. They did so because they believed, based on the Supreme Courts own partisan gerrymandering decisions, that the Court would do nothing to stop such gerrymandering. Texas calculation may yet prove to be correct.
The Perezes are cases about delay. Texas enacted its gerrymandered maps in 2011, and while those maps were partially altered in 2013, a federal court found that portions of those maps were illegal racial gerrymanders in 2017. Its now 2018 and, thanks in part to the Supreme Courts intervention, it is all but certain that the gerrymandered maps will be in effect during this years midterm elections. Even if the Supreme Court ultimately rules against Texas, their decision is likely to only impact one election the 2020 races before the Census requires the state to draw a new set of maps.
https://thinkprogress.org/supreme-court-texas-gerrymandering-587effd27894/
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Even before the Roberts Era, the Supreme Court never quite got this fact. The Courts failure to understand that redistricting is a special area of the law requiring extra scrutiny is the original sin of its gerrymandering jurisprudence. It is the reason why Texas is able to get away with employing the maps it has now.
Perez threatens to make matters even worse. At the very moment when the Courts right flank wants to seize a larger role in shaping American policy, the same flank appears completely unconcerned by efforts to rig elections.
Squinch
(51,004 posts)Demsrule86
(68,667 posts)Civic Justice
(870 posts)We need to look at "The Root Cause Of Things, not just the outworking that were crafted behind a historically racist system; which infected the Principle's within not just within and upon the Supreme Court, but "EVERYTHING" in this entire nation and how its historically racist systems were structured to work in support of a historical racist structure. Then one can look at Political Party's which show conclusively the racist element within the difference in the Party's Aspirations.