Greg Stohr for Bloomberg. The U.S. Supreme Court enters the homestretch of its term with looming decisions that could affect the 2020 election and thrust the court even deeper into the nation’s political wars.Between now and the end of June, … Continue reading
Category Archives: redistricting
More major allegations coming out of the Hofeller hard drives. See this pdf, beginning at Exhibit C, page 7 (page 113 of the pdf). Some snippets from the plaintiff’s letter: … Continue reading
Michael Kang has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, Boston College Law Review). Here is the abstract: We live in hyperpartisan times. Democrats and Republicans have not been so bitterly divided along partisan lines since Reconstruction, nor so aggressively hostile … Continue reading
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Assembly Speaker Robin Vos won’t have to sit for a deposition in Wisconsin’s gerrymandering case in the short term — and might escape having to testify entirely. A panel of appeals judges blocked a lower court order Tuesday for the Rochester … Continue reading
Mark Joseph Stern for Slate: There are sure to be more revelations from the Hofeller files to come, driving home the downside of using a single consultant to mastermind redistricting across multiple states and decades.For years, Hofeller held an office … Continue reading
Release: Yesterday, Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak signed a bill into law ensuring that people in state prisons will be counted as residents of their home addresses when new legislative districts are drawn. The new law makes Nevada the sixth state to end … Continue reading
The following is a guest post from Wendy Tam Cho: The Court has issued a stay in the Ohio and Michigan partisan gerrymandering cases, and we await their rulings in North Carolina and Maryland. I was an expert witness in … Continue reading
Today’s orders are no surprise. Indeed, the Court often fails to give preliminary relief in redistricting cases even when the plaintiffs eventually win on the merits. Indeed, if the Court did allow the remaps to take place while the Maryland … Continue reading
Release: Today, Washington State Governor Jay Inslee signed a bill into law ensuring that people in state prisons will be counted as residents of their home addresses when new legislative districts are drawn, making Washington the fifth state to end the practice … Continue reading
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: A panel of federal judges late Friday temporarily blocked a lower court’s order that Assembly Speaker Robin Vos sit for a deposition in Wisconsin’s gerrymandering case. In their brief order, the judges wrote that they were suspending the requirement that … Continue reading
Detroit News: A House appropriations bill would allow the state’s Republican-led Legislature to hold the purse strings for the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission approved by voters in November.The spending bill also would chip away at Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel’s … Continue reading
Roll Call: The Supreme Court on Monday gave the challengers of congressional maps in Ohio and Michigan until May 20 to respond to requests from state officials to stop court-ordered redrawing of district lines. Lower courts found the maps were … Continue reading
New CAP report from Alex Tausanovitch: Introduction and summaryFrom 2012 to 2016, the people of Michigan cast more than 50 percent of their ballots for Democratic Party legislative candidates. They voted for Democrats 52 percent of the time for the … Continue reading
SCOTUSBlog: At the end of March, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in two cases challenging federal congressional districts in North Carolina and Maryland as the product of unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering. A key question in both cases was whether courts should review partisan-gerrymandering claims … Continue reading
Here at The Economist. … Continue reading
Mike Parsons: In the past two weeks, federal district courts have struck down partisan gerrymanders in both Michigan and Ohio. As a matter of legal doctrine, these decisions are important. As Nick Stephanopoulos states, they reveal an emerging consensus among lower courts on the standards … Continue reading
Mark Joseph Stern for Slate. … Continue reading
Gongwer: Michigan Republicans have asked the three-judge panel that ruled last week the Legislature must redraw maps for Michigan’s 14 U.S. House seats, the Michigan Senate and the Michigan House for an emergency stay of the ruling.The motion for an … Continue reading
David Daley in Salon: Since November 2016, federal courts and state supreme courts nationwide, exhausted by districts crafted with such surgical partisan intent that they become impervious to shifts in the electorate, have also struck down entire maps in Wisconsin, … Continue reading
On Friday, Nick Stephanopoulos offered his cogent analysis of the three-judge district court decision holdings that Ohio’s congressional districts violate the Equal Protection Clause and First Amendment right of association. Politico notes that the judges on the case were ” … Continue reading
You can find the opinion at this link. From the introduction: We join the other federal courts that have held partisan gerrymandering unconstitutional and developed substantially similar standards for adjudicating such claims. We are convinced by the evidence that this … Continue reading
Steve Mazie for the Economist. Yet the difficulty of replicating Michigan’s transition in most other states is a hard reality. And the Wolverine state’s success is allowing some justices to believe that the courts can sit back and let democracy … Continue reading
Detroit News: Michigan legislative and congressional Republicans are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a blockbuster ruling that the state’s political maps must be redrawn because of an unconstitutional gerrymander of “historical proportions.” Attorneys for GOP lawmakers on Tuesday filed notices … Continue reading
NC Policy Watch: The daughter of late GOP mapmaker Thomas Hofeller – the man responsible for some of North Carolina’s most infamous gerrymanders – turned over four of his external hard drives and 18 thumb drives after his death to … Continue reading
You can find the unanimous 146-page decision at this link. The court embraced both an equal protection theory and a First Amendment theory, the two main theories the Supreme Court is considering in the pending partisan gerrymandering cases out of … Continue reading
Wow, this is quite a lineup. … Continue reading
Bloomberg Law: The Supreme Court’s newest justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, highlighted independent redistricting commissions as a solution to state legislatures maximizing seats for the party in power while drawing voting districts.But legal experts say these commissions can’t solve … Continue reading
Mike Parsons blogs. … Continue reading
Tierney Sneed: Catching up on the amicus briefs filed in the Census case at SCOTUS and, oh hey look at that, Ed Blum—who spearheaded the lawsuit that gutted the Voting Rights Act— wants a citizenship question so noncitizens can be … Continue reading
Ned Foley blogs. … Continue reading
Here. … Continue reading
At the recent oral argument in the partisan gerrymandering cases, both Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh raised the question whether partisan gerrymandering is a problem that could solve itself without federal court intervention. One possibility is through congressional action establishing state … Continue reading
Michael Latner: The lower equality standard reflected in current Constitutional interpretations is well understood among both election law experts and political scientists. Justice Breyer has noted the tension between single-seat districts and proportional representation. The most prominent metric of partisan advantage in … Continue reading
Mark Joseph Stern for Slate: As Talking Points Memo’s Tierney Sneed has observed, Gorsuch’s question effectively weaponizes redistricting reform as an argument againstfederal court intervention. His solution—let the people solve the problem—is absurd for at least two reasons: The court may … Continue reading
Steve Mazie for The Economist. … Continue reading
Yesterday, Nick offered some thoughts on the arguments in the Rucho and Benisek partisan gerrymandering cases, and several Justices’ fixation on whether all of this litigation is just a Trojan horse for achieving proportional representation. Nick’s post highlights the fact … Continue reading
In my write-up of what’s at stake in the partisan gerrymandering cases over at Slate, I focused on whether Chief Justice Roberts is in play. I dismissed whether Justice Kavanaugh is in play with a single sentence: “And while we … Continue reading
Rucho (North Carolina case) Benisek (Maryland case) … Continue reading
David Gans Buzzfeed oped. … Continue reading
Michael Wines in the NYT. … Continue reading
Roy Cooper and Larry Hogan WaPo oped. … Continue reading
Ralph Hise and David Lewis in The Atlantic: “I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats, because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans … Continue reading
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. … Continue reading
AP: The AP’s analysis indicates that Republicans won about 16 more U.S. House seats than would have been expected based on their average share of the vote in congressional districts across the country. In state House elections, Republicans’ structural advantage … Continue reading
NYT reports on today’s Bethune-Hill II oral argument. … Continue reading
You can find the transcript here. … Continue reading
Adam Liptak NYT Sidebar column. … Continue reading
WaPo: The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Monday in a redistricting case that could help determine the balance of power in Virginia’s legislature for years to come.A panel of lower-court judges ruled last year that 11 Virginia House of Delegates districts … Continue reading
From the hearing list: … Continue reading
John Myers for the LAT: California government auditors will begin accepting applications in June from citizens who would like to help redraw the state’s congressional and legislative maps, a task with enormous political consequences.The once-a-decade redistricting process will also offer … Continue reading