The Supreme Court is allowing California to use its new congressional map for this year’s midterm election, clearing the way for the state’s gerrymandered districts as Democrats and Republicans continue their fight for control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
The state’s voters approved the redistricting plan last year as a Democratic counterresponse to Texas’ new GOP-friendly map, which President Trump pushed for to help Republicans hold on to their narrow majority in the House.
And in an unsigned order released Wednesday, the high court’s majority denied an emergency request by the California’s Republican Party to block the redistricting plan. The state’s GOP argued that the map violated the U.S. Constitution because its creation was mainly driven by race, not partisan politics. A lower federal court rejected that claim.
I’d hope this will bring us closer to real legal barriers to gerrymandering, if hope hadn’t been beaten out of me by now.
The weird thing is this CA law removed anti-gerrymandering laws. We had a legal barrier here in CA, but this law was to remove that barrier so we could counter TX. It sucked voting for it.
From what I’ve read the barrier wasn’t actually removed, so much as putting it on pause for a time. This map will only be in place until 2030 when the maps were going to be redrawn anyway, at which point the new map will be created using the standard anti-gerrymandering method.
It’s time constrained.
The change is time constrained. Anti gerrymandering laws go back into place.