STATE OF THE UNION TONIGHT | America’s Love Affair With Partisan Gerrymandering | Chemerinsky On Trump Travel Ban
January 30, 2018
NO RBG, NO PROBLEM
|Tonight, PRESIDENT TRUMP will deliver his first State of the Union address and make the argument that he has had a successful first year in office. ICYMI, the NOTORIOUS RBG made headlines over the weekend because she won’t be attending the president’s speech tonight. Instead, she’ll be at the Roger Williams University School of Law in Rhode Island to deliver a “fireside chat.” Tony Mauro with The National Law Journal explains that RBG’s absence isn’t that big of a deal. Rather, it is actually fairly common for Supreme Court justices to skip the presidential address.
AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER
|SCOTUSDaily readers know better than most that the country is having a torturous love affair with the issue of gerrymandering right now, as courts across the nation weigh in on the issue with varying degrees of support — and rejection. The New York Times provides an outline of all the major gerrymandering cases that were recently ruled on, and a look at those still under court review.
A SHOT IN THE DARK
|David Savage with the Los Angeles Times reports that the Supreme Court appears ready to block the Pennsylvania supreme court’s ruling on partisan gerrymandering which struck down the state’s congressional map. The decision from state justices was rooted in their belief that the map defies its state constitution — the sort of ruling the U.S. Supreme Court has no grounds to review. However, Republicans appealed the decision to JUSTICE SAMUEL ALITO late last week and yesterday the justice asked for a response to the appeal from the League of Women Voters. As Savage points out, this action suggests that Alito believes a majority of his colleagues would grant the appeal as he could have just denied the appeal outright if he thought it had no chance of being granted by the high court.
A SUPREME DILMEMMA
|Lyle Denniston writing for Constitution Daily points out that the little the Supreme Court has said on the Constitution’s Election Clause creates a big dilemma for the justices as they soon decide what to do with the Pennsylvania partisan gerrymandering case. Because here’s the deal: justices aren’t supposed to intervene in cases where a state supreme court makes a ruling on its own constitution. States are supposed to have the final word on the meaning of their own document. But as Denniston points out, “When the federal Constitution’s Election Clause enters the discussion, that ordinary deference may not cause the justices to hold back. And that creates a constitutional dilemma for justices.”
AN UPSIDE FOR DEMOCRATS
|Is it possible that partisan gerrymandering is actually good for Dems? Tyler Cowen argues in BloombergView exactly that. Cowen asserts gerrymandering “eases the path for social liberalism” by creating a more concentrated majority of Democrats and pushing candidates further and further to the Left.
THE ROOT OF IT ALL
|“All of this may be a bit wonky for the average person. But there’s a larger message in all the data. As people judge the current state of politics, there is more at fault than partisan gerrymandering, as distasteful as it might be.” That’s Dan Balz with The Washington Post explaining that partisan gerrymandering may not be the root of all political evil. There’s more to the story — you just have to look a little deeper.
TOP-ED
|In The Sacramento Bee, Erwin Chemerinsky argues that when the Supreme Court considers the president’s latest version of his travel ban, it should slap it down for good. He notes, “The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act eliminated the old system where immigration was based on quotas from particular countries. It was this approach that kept many fleeing the Holocaust from being able to come to this country and condemned them to death in concentration camps. The statute also is based on the simple premise that it is wrong to presume a person to be more dangerous because of race or sex or religion or nationality or place of birth or place of residence. The Trump travel ban violates this in a particularly irrational way because, as lower courts have observed, there is no link between the designated countries and any proven terrorist acts in the United States. It is perversely ironic that the only thing that these countries seem to share in common is that Donald Trump has no economic investments in them.”
OTHER NEWS
It's Not Just Union Dues, It's Collective Bargaining: Looking To States That Banned Them As Post-Janus Crystal Ball
The74“Unions can essentially affect education policy in two ways: political advocacy through lobbying and campaign donations in state legislatures, and through contracts they collectively bargain on behalf of members at the district level. An end to mandatory dues could limit unions’ political influence in state legislatures, but it wouldn’t necessarily change their rights to collectively bargain.”