The Complaint Filed By Republicans Against the Maps Created by California’s Prop 50 Raising Racial Gerrymandering and Intentional Discrimination Claims Faces an Uphill Battle, Especially Given 2026 Timing

redistricting, Voting Rights Act

You can find the complaint here. The main argument in the case is that plaintiffs engaged in a racial gerrymander by making race the predominant factor in drawing district lines without s compelling reason to to so. The primary allegations concern what the mapmaker for the Legislature said about protecting Latino voting power in the new district lines, something that the state would be required to do to to comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

If partisanship, preserving communities of interest or other factors predominated when the Legislature drew the lines enacted via Proposition 50, then the case would fail on the first prong. Seems like this was a very partisan process, so there’s a good chance the case would fail on this prong. If we get to the second prong, the state could try to defend by saying the districts were drawn race consciously to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

There is also a brief set of claims in here that the Legislature drew lines to intentionally discriminate against Latinos. That claim is supported by no real evidence and I don’t expect it to go anywhere.

Plaintiffs will likely seek a preliminary injunction and have asked for a three-judge court. They will likely want a preliminary injunction hearing quickly. It may not happen quickly, and as we get closer to the election, the Purcell Principle, which has been applied to similar challenges in Louisiana and Alabama, tells courts not to make changes to districts in the period close to the election. Although applying Purcell typically has benefitted Republicans could benefit Democrats in this instance.

If the district court denies the injunction, plaintiffs could try to get emergency relief from the Supreme Court.

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The New Fraudulent Fraud Squad: “Trump Administration Chooses a Critic of California Elections to Monitor Them”

fraudulent fraud squad

NYT:

When the Justice Department announced a week and half ago that it would send monitors to watch California’s elections, it didn’t say who exactly would be doing the monitoring.

For Orange County, a populous and ethnically diverse area south of Los Angeles, the administration tapped Michael Gates, a lawyer with a history of questioning the county’s voting procedures.

For years, Mr. Gates worked as the city attorney for the Orange County community of Huntington Beach, where in 2024 he helped pass the first local voter identification law in the state. When the California attorney general and secretary of state sued, saying that the city’s law conflicted with state election laws, Mr. Gates defended the city in court.

In February, Mr. Gates was appointed deputy assistant attorney general in the federal Justice Department’s civil rights division. Shortly afterward, the department sued election officials in Orange County, alleging that noncitizen immigrants were receiving mail-in ballots and voting. The Department of Justice filed the lawsuit after the county registrar refused to release unredacted voting records and registration information for alleged noncitizen voters.

Local election officials said this week that the Justice Department had informed them that Mr. Gates and an assistant U.S. attorney, Cory Webster, would be serving as election observers in Orange County. Mr. Webster was hired as a U.S. attorney late last year….

It was unclear precisely how Mr. Gates and Mr. Webster were observing the election in a county with nearly two million voters. But Democrats questioned Mr. Gates’s ability to be a fair and impartial monitor.

Rob Bonta, the California attorney general, said he planned to send his own monitors to guard against any voter intimidation. And the state Democratic Party sent out more than 2,000 of its own observers — a record number of volunteers in the role — and had about 150 lawyers stationed around the state. While some Democratic officials were worried about voter intimidation, several said that they were more concerned about what the federal officials would say after the election.

“If they so much as blink at anything like voter interference, they will find themselves in parking lot or in jail,” said Justin Levitt, who served in the Justice Department’s civil rights division during the Biden administration. “But I think they will continue to sow doubt without any evidence.” Mr. Levitt said that as a political appointee, he would not have taken such a role in monitoring elections….

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Joey Fishkin: “California’s Prop 50 passed. Now, here’s how to end partisan redistricting once and for all “

political parties, political polarization, redistricting

Joey Fishkin with an important piece in the SF Chronicle:

The nationalization of politics also provides an opening to solve this problem. Congress has the power to do what it did in 1842: Enact a statute to bring both parties back from the brink. Congress’ authority to set the “Times, Places, and Manner” of choosing representatives is undisputed. Prop 50 itself, perhaps as a sweetener to help the partisan medicine go down, included an anti-gerrymandering cri de coeur: It “establishes state policy supporting use of fair, independent, and nonpartisan redistricting commissions nationwide.” 

We need a new federal statute of mutual disarmament — ideally before we reach the point where there are zero California Republicans and zero Texas Democrats. Prop 50’s call for nonpartisan redistricting commissions nationwide is a good start. So is the bill by Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin (Placer County), who may lose his seat because of Prop 50, which would ban mid-decade redistricting nationwide. 

However, there are major problems to overcome. First, it will be difficult to prevent states from stacking nonpartisan commissions with partisans. Second, the two parties are unfortunately not similarly situated: Both parties benefit from gerrymandering, but Republicans have more opportunities and benefit more. That is part of why Democrats were able to unite their caucus in 2021 behind their democratic reform package, HR1, which included a requirement that every state use a nonpartisan redistricting commission, whereas Republicans do not seem interested in even Kiley’s modest bill. 

Thus, unfortunately, the most plausible route to solving the gerrymandering problem is to elect a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, and a Democrat in the White House, and then make sure they — at their moment of maximum opportunity to lock in partisan advantage through partisan hardball — instead engage in anti-hardball, building fairer rules for everyone. ….

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“Mark Cuban Joins Legal Fight Against Dark Money and Super PACs”

Uncategorized

This is a story in Sportico about HLS’s Election Law Clinic’s amicus brief on behalf of a group of billionaires arguing that Maine’s limit on Super PAC contributions doesn’t burden their speech and serves important goals including preventing corruption and avoiding the distortion of the political system.

Dallas Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban has teamed up with four other billionaires—hedge fund manager William von Mueffling, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and venture capitalists Steve Jurvetson and Vin Ryan—to argue in an amicus brief that their enormous wealth shouldn’t provide them more political influence than other Americans and that a Maine campaign finance law limiting contributions to super political action committees (super PACs) is both sensible and constitutional.

“Because of their wealth,” the brief says of the billionaires, “amici have the capacity to be extraordinarily influential in America’s political system. But amici didn’t ask for this power. And they don’t want it.”

The brief concerns Dinner Table Action & For Our Future v. William J. Schneider et al., a case brought by two Maine super PACs that accept contributions exceeding Maine’s limit. Several Maine officials, including Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices chairman William J. Schneider, are the defendants.

The case centers on whether a citizen referendum, overwhelmingly approved by Maine voters last year, complies with First Amendment political speech protections. The resulting act sets a $5,000 limit for super PACs. It also includes disclosure requirements regarding the identity of donors and donations related to funding communications that advocate for the election or defeat of a particular candidate. The referendum was backed by Equal Citizens and its founder, Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig. . . .

Last Thursday, professors Samuel Jacob Davis and Ruth Greenwood of the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School submitted an amicus brief on behalf of Cuban and his colleagues. . . .

Cuban’s group sees Maine’s law as “reasonable” and “necessary to protect” democracy from “the kind of corruption that plagues too many elections.” That is especially important in a sparsely populated state like Maine, where “a relatively small amount of outside money can play an outsized role in local races that should be focused on local issues.”

The brief contends that regulating super PAC contributions imposes minimal constraints on free speech rights. It asserts that super PACs “give voters little useful information and often express a muddled political message,” with donations “often funneled through shell entities” known as “dark money organizations.” . . .

Further, the brief warns that unlimited super PAC contributions “create a serious risk of actual quid pro quo corruption and its appearance.” It cites former U.S. Senator—and now convicted felon—Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who was accused of using super PAC contributions as payoffs for influencing a Medicare billing dispute involving a friend. The brief also points out that super PAC contributors have been appointed to high-ranking positions. For instance, current U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon “had no teaching experience prior to her appointment, but she had donated tens of millions of dollars to various super PACs supporting the president who appointed her.”

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Proposition 50: “California voters pass anti-Trump, pro-Democrat ballot measure”

direct democracy, redistricting

LA Times:

California Democrats’ effort to block President Trump’s agenda by increasing their party’s numbers in Congress was overwhelmingly approved by voters on Tuesday.

The Associated Press called the victory moments after the polls closed Tuesday night.

The statewide ballot measure will reconfigure California’s congressional districts to favor more Democratic candidates. The Democratic-led California Legislature placed the measure on the Nov. 4 ballot, at Gov. Gavin Newsom’s behest, after Trump urged Texas and other GOP-led states to modify their congressional maps to favor their party members, a move designed to keep the U.S. House of Representatives in Republican control during his final two years in office.

Proposition 50 was the sole item on the statewide, special-election ballot Tuesday. Supporters hope the ballot measure has become a referendum about Trump, who remains extremely unpopular in California, while opponents call Prop. 50 an underhanded power grab by Democrats….

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“All three Pa. Supreme Court justices are retained following a historically expensive race”

judicial elections

Philly Inquirer:

All three Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices on Tuesday’s ballot for retention will remain on the bench, following an unprecedented and closely watched retention election that eclipsed previous spending records as Democrats sought to protect the liberal judges.

Pennsylvania’s highest court will maintain its liberal majority for at least the next two years, retaining JusticesChristine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht through the 2026 midterms and ahead of the 2028 presidential election. During that time, the court will hear cases that impact the daily lives of Pennsylvania residents, such as abortion access, voter access, mail voting law, and more. The Associated Press called the race at 9:53 p.m. Tuesday, less than two hours after polls closed.

The stakes of Tuesday’s judicial retention election were set up a decade ago by a perfect storm of factors.The three justices up for retention — Donohue, Dougherty, Wecht — were each elected as Democrats in 2015 during a rare and transitional period for the court when Democrats took a majority. The 2015 election was the first time three seats were open at one time, in part due to resignations of disgraced former justices. Since then, Donohue, Dougherty, and Wecht have played decisive roles on the 5-2 liberal majority of Pennsylvania’s highest court.

This year’s retention race — usually a sleepy, off-year affair — topped $16 million in ad buys and mailers, mostly from Democrats or aligned groups, to try to draw voters out to the polls to protect the liberal majority they view as the last backstop to protect Pennsylvanians’ rights during an overreaching Trump administration. Republicans, meanwhile, saw the high-stakes race as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to oust three liberal state Supreme Court justices in one election….

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