The Supreme Court today issued a decision on partisan gerrymandering, the practice of politicians drawing maps that give themselves an advantage over other parties by manipulating an increasingly sophisticated understanding of who votes how and where you live to guarantee the most seats in Congress and state legislatures.
You can read the ruling here.
Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s other four conservatives — Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch — found that the court does not have standing to intervene even in the most extreme examples of gerrymandering.
"Partisan gerrymandering claims rest on an instinct that groups with a certain level of political support should enjoy a commensurate level of political power and influence. Such claims invariably sound in a desire for proportional representation, but the Constitution doesnot require proportional representation, and federal courts are neither equipped nor authorized to apportion political power as a matter of fairness,” Robert wrote. "It is not even clear what fairness looks like in this context."
Roberts did admit that “the districting plans at issue here are highly partisan, by any measure. The question is whether the courts below appropriately exercised judicial power when they found them unconstitutional as well.” The Roberts majority did not find that the lower court’s decisions were constitutional.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissent representing herself and the three other liberal members of the nation’s highest court. It was a very strongly worded dissent, in which she called the majority’s decision an “abdication” that is “tragically wrong."
“The partisan gerrymanders here debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside-down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people,” Kagan wrote. “Is this how American democracy is supposed to work,” she asks rhetorically.
Tom Wolf from the Brennan Center for Justice talked three weeks ago about what he expected from the court, and today he comes back on the show to give his thoughts about the court's ruling.
Outro music: "There Goes My Miracle" by Bruce Springsteen
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Bonus Episode: Tom Wolf reacts to today's Supreme Court gerrymandering decision