This new flag flying was two years after the first case. Sammy’s wife really showed those Trump-hating neighbors.
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6-3? Rename the podcast
https://x.com/redistrictnet/status/1793646394458447885?s=46&t=XGja5BtSraUljl_WWUrIUg
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Basically racial gerrymanders are legal now.
Too bad there isn’t an opposition party to complain about insurrectionist government officials.
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Always was
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Along the way, Alito’s opinion gives the Court’s explicit blessing to maps that are drawn for the very purpose of maximizing one political party’s power. In the very first paragraph of his Alexander opinion, Alito states that “as far as the Federal Constitution is concerned, a legislature may pursue partisan ends when it engages in redistricting.”
This is a significant statement, as it endorses a practice — partisan gerrymandering — that the Court has previously treated as unseemly. The Court’s most significant previous opinion on partisan gerrymandering, Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), held that federal courts lack jurisdiction to hear cases challenging partisan maps, but it stopped short of saying that such maps are actually permissible under the Constitution.
Rucho even declared that partisan gerrymandering “leads to results that reasonably seem unjust” and called it “incompatible with democratic principles.” The Court just concluded that the solution to this anti-democratic practice is “beyond the reach of the federal courts.”
Alexander, by contrast, contains none of these caveats. Rigged maps now enjoy the Supreme Court’s unambiguous support.
On top of all of this, Alexander achieves another one of Alito’s longtime goals. Alito frequently disdains any allegation that a white lawmaker might have been motivated by racism, and he’s long sought to write a presumption of white racial innocence into the law. His dismissive attitude toward any allegation that racism might exist in American government is on full display in his opinion. “When a federal court finds that race drove a legislature’s districting decisions, it is declaring that the legislature engaged in ‘offensive and demeaning conduct,’” Alito writes, before proclaiming that “we should not be quick to hurl such accusations at the political branches.”
So Alexander is a very significant decision, and a very significant loss for proponents of fair legislative maps. The case is likely to cause partisan gerrymandering to proliferate in the United States even more than it already has.
This seems to be the biggest difference between Robert’s “centrism” and the right wing on the court. Roberts still wants to pay lip service to free and fair elections, but of course rule that there’s nothing that can be done about it, whereas the right wing is like ‘actually it’s good that we don’t have free and fair elections’. Tellingly though all the conservatives are on board with the end goal.
This goes along with Thomas’s side soliloquy that basically all Civil Rights legislation was determined incorrectly. Roberts won’t say that and probably wouldn’t vote for something so outrageous, but he’ll go along with making it a dead letter law because ultimately they all want the same thing
In case you missed it (because I did), a federal district court judge in MS called out the Supreme Court, on the record, regarding the abomination that is Qualified Immunity:
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well as long as you say they aren’t racial gerrmanders
The problem with this gerrymandering bullshit is that states like CA have adopted independent commissions, so it’s mainly red states that can exploit the loophole. Still, this antidemocratic shit piles up, and eventually you’ll have 60% of the country saying, “I don’t think so”. It may be 20 years, but historical forces are a bit like geological phenomena. They work slowly but their effects are profound.
That’s great except those 60% will control like 35% of the seats and will be told to go pound sand.
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The SCOTUS didn’t allow the Louisiana map a week ago.
Correct, they used the lol Purcell Principle and the 3 liberals dissented; they didn’t actually decide on the merits one way or the other.
Just fucking LOL DEMOCRATS man. How are you not carving CA, IL and NY up for maximum representation. The Court JUST TOLD YOU THATS ALLOWED
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CA passed an independent redistricting commission like 15 years ago via ballot initiative. Would take another ballot initiative to undo that (which is perhaps possible).
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Start a ballot initiative that mandates max number of safe D districts.
I’ve always felt that focusing on the racist aspects of gerrymandering is missing the bigger problem with it, that it creates too many seats that are not responsive to the electorate.
nah its only allowed for republicans
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