June has brought a new, unwelcome routine for Mary Jo Pitzl, a political reporter for the Arizona Republic. Her beat includes congressional redistricting, the subject of a major Supreme Court decision three time zones away that has been eagerly anticipated for weeks—but hasn’t yet come.
“I’m a night owl. This is bad,” Pitzl says. “I set my alarm for 6:45, stumble out of bed, get to my computer and open all the relevant windows.”
Pitzl and a small community of Western political professionals, elected officials, and journalists have been rising with the sun every Monday this month (and a few other days, too), waiting to see whether the Court junks congressional maps in Arizona, California, and possibly other states. A case from Arizona could invalidate the independent commissions that drew the maps in several states where voters used ballot measures to take gerrymandering power away from state legislators. Depending on how the Court rules, those legislators and their aides could start redrawing congressional maps any day.
But because the Court never announces which opinions it will release on a given day, interested parties have spent early mornings waiting for a decision on five days so far this month. After weeks primed in the starting blocks without an answer, they’re starting to get antsy….
Technology has made the wait for Supreme Court opinions both faster and more torturous, in a way. Rick Hasen, an election law professor at the University of California, Irvine who writes atElectionLawBlog.org, recalled that he had to wait half an hour after the landmark Bush v. Goredecision was announced in 2000 to read the opinion. It was first available online on TheWashington Post‘s website. Now, quick reports are immediately available on SCOTUSblog and Twitter, and opinions are posted to the Supreme Court’s website minutes after they are announced.
“It’s fun to gripe about it, but there are a lot more things to complain about how SCOTUS conducts itself,” Hasen said. (The morning of June 15, Hasen tweeted: “As an election law person about to get on a plane, I am THRILLED #SCOTUS did not decide AZ redistricting case today.”) It would help if the Court simply said which opinions would come out each day, Hasen continued.