The Supreme Court handed down a 6-3 decision along party lines on Thursday, representing its fullest endorsement of partisan gerrymandering to date.
In the past, legal restrictions on ethnicity Gerrymandering – the drawing of maps to reduce the voting power of a particular ethnic group rather than the power of a political party – also had the side effect of limiting efforts to draw maps that benefited one party or another. While the Court mainly tolerated gerrymanders designed to lock one party into power, those maps sometimes failed because they also targeted racial minorities.
In Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion Alexander v. State Conference of the South Carolina NAACP, however, is clearly written to allow political parties to draw rigged maps, even when those maps maximize the power of white voters and minimize the power of voters of color. Indeed, Alito said one of the purposes of his opinion was to prevent litigants from “repackaging.”[ing] A partisan-gerrymandering claim exploits the strong connection between race and political preference as a racial-gerrymandering claim.”
Along the way, Alito’s opinion gives the Court’s clear blessing to maps that are drawn to maximize a political party’s power. In his first paragraph Alexander In the opinion, Alito stated that “as far as the federal Constitution is concerned, a legislature can accomplish partisan ends when it engages in reapportionment.”
This is a significant statement, because it endorses a practice — partisan gerrymandering — that courts have previously treated as objectionable. The Court’s most notable prior opinion on bias is, Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), held that federal courts lack jurisdiction to hear cases challenging partisan maps, but that is not to say that such maps are actually permitted under the Constitution.
taste Even declared that partisan gerrymandering “leads to results that appear to be reasonably unjust” and called it “inconsistent with democratic principles.” The court concluded that redress of this anti-democratic practice was “beyond the reach of the federal courts”.
Alexander, in contrast, contains none of these caveats. The rigged map now enjoys the unequivocal support of the Supreme Court.
Above all this, Alexander Accomplishes another of Alito’s longtime goals. Alito often scorns accusations that a white lawmaker might be motivated by racism, and he has long sought to write the presumption of white racial innocence into law. His dismissive attitude toward accusations that racism might exist in American government is on full display in his views. “When a federal court finds that race drove a legislature’s districting decisions, it is declaring that the legislature engaged in ‘outrageous and contemptuous conduct,'” Alito wrote, before declaring that “we should not throw such charges at the political branch. “
so Alexander A very important decision, and a very important loss for supporters of fair legal maps This case could make partisan gerrymandering in the United States even more widespread than before.
Big question in between Alexander: What happens when a legislature is both racial and partisan?
From many years ago tasteAt least the Supreme Court Keep the possibilities open It can strike maps drawn for the benefit of one political party or another. tastewhich, like AlexanderThe decision was made along party lines, with the majority of the court Republican, ending any possibility that a partisan gerrymandering case could move forward in federal court.
Although the court no longer allows challenges to partisan gerrymanders, it has allowed civil rights plaintiffs to challenge racial gerrymanders: maps drawn to increase the power of voters of one race or reduce the power of voters of a different race.
South Carolina map at issue AlexanderHowever, both were a partisan gerrymander and a racial gerrymander.
In 2018, former Rep. Joe Cunningham, a Democrat, narrowly won South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District. In 2020, he received more than 49 percent of the vote but lost that seat to Republican Rep. Nancy Mays.
All, including Alito, acknowledged that South Carolina’s Republican legislature redrawn congressional maps to shore up Republican control of the 1st District after the 2020 census. The lower court that heard the case determined, however, that the Legislature did so by using race as a proxy to identify voters most likely to vote for Democrats.
In 2020, 90 percent of South Carolina’s black voters voted for President Joe Biden, so the mapmakers knew that if they removed a large number of black voters from the 1st District, it would make the district more Republican. And so the lower court found that South Carolina’s mapmakers cut Charleston County, including many white voters from that county in the First District, leaving out about 80 percent of Charleston’s black population.
before Alexander, the use of race in this way was illegal. Held in the Supreme Court Cooper v. Harris (2017) that “selecting voters on the basis of their ethnicity remains suspect even if ethnicity is used as a proxy for other (including political) characteristics.”
Alito though Alexander The opinion clearly does not overrule this holding Cooper, it effectively achieves that goal. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the dissent, Alito’s latest opinion closely follows his dissent Cooper. “Today, for all practical purposes,” Kagan wrote, “the Cooper Dissent becomes law.”
ALitto writes a strong presumption of white racial innocence into the law
Most of the cases turned to a factual dispute over whether South Carolina Republicans used the race to identify which voters should move out of the first district. Alito’s opinion argues that the lower court reached the wrong factual conclusion when it determined that they did; Kagan’s opinion takes the opposite position.
Generally, appellate courts are not supposed to second-guess the trial court’s findings of fact. A trial judge listens to witness testimony and develops an intimate familiarity with a case that comes from hearing both sides fully present their factual arguments; The Supreme Court does not.
As held in the Supreme Court CooperA lower court’s “findings of fact — most notably, whether racial considerations prevailed in drawing district lines — Subject to review for manifest error only“
Alito Alexander The opinion pays lip service to this apparent error standard, but it effectively eliminates it in the reordering case. The new rule is that state legislators “Presumption of legislative good faith“When they’re accused of racial gerrymandering.
Alito wrote that “nothing rules out the possibility” that the movement of black voters from the First District was “simply a side effect of the Legislature’s partisan goals.” And given the assumption that legislatures can do whatever they want, “that possibility is decisive.”
Later, according to him, Alito went even further. The lower court, he contends, “critically erred by failing to draw an adverse inference against the challengers for not providing an alternative map that shows how the state achieved its legitimate political objectives” in District 1 while creating a “significantly greater racial balance.” can achieve’.’
What Alito is saying here is that, when a state draws a partisan gerrymander, anyone who wants to challenge it as an invalid racial gerrymander must show that there is some way to draw a more racially equitable map that still achieves the same partisan goal. And if the challengers fail to do so, the court must usually rule against those challengers.
so Alexander It’s an important victory for lawmakers who want to use the race for lawmakers and for Alito’s Republican Party.
