KNOCKDOWN, NOT KNOCKOUT ON GERRYMANDERING | Clarence Thomas Shocks The World | SCOTUS Budget’s Private Meeting
May 23, 2017
SCOTUS COMES DOWN ON GERRYMANDERING
|In case you missed it, the Supreme Court brought the hammer down on gerrymandering Monday, ruling that the Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature had drawn two congressional districts that amount to unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.
THE BIG DECISION EXPLAINED
|“Election law expert Rick Hasen concluded his reaction to the Supreme Court’s racial gerrymandering case with one word: ‘Wow.’” German Lopez with Vox provides us with an explanation of yesterday’s ruling and its potential impacts on future gerrymandering cases.
TOP-ED
|Speaking of Rick Hasen’s reaction, he opined in The Washington Post that perhaps the most important elements of the Supreme Court’s North Carolina ruling was hidden away in the footnotes. Hasen writes, “The majority buried a doozy, a potentially powerful new tool to attack voting rights violations in the South and elsewhere.”
KNOCKDOWN, NOT KNOCKOUT
|The Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times responded to the Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday striking down the way two of North Carolina’s congressional districts were mapped. LAT notes, “The ruling is a welcome blow against the time-dishonored practice of gerrymandering — drawing district lines to give one party an unfair advantage — but it won’t eliminate the practice completely. That will require a future ruling in which the court holds that gerrymandering even in the absence of racial considerations violates the Constitution.”
CLARENCE THOMAS JOINS LIBERALS, SHOCKS WORLD
|It was the four liberal justices plus one unlikely ally that struck down the North Carolina congressional map. Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern explains, “The broad ruling will likely have ripple effects on litigation across the country, helping plaintiffs establish that state legislatures unlawfully injected race into redistricting. And, in a welcome change, the decision did not split along familiar ideological lines: JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS joined the four liberal justices to create a majority, following his race-blind principles of equal protection to an unusually progressive result.”
TROLLING THE TROLLS
|“The Supreme Court on Monday placed tight limits on where patent lawsuits may be filed — a unanimous decision that was a blow to so-called patent trolls, or companies that buy patents not to use them but to demand royalties and sue for damages. Such companies have often sued in remote federal courts that have a reputation for friendliness to plaintiffs. More than 40 percent of patent lawsuits, for instance, are filed in a federal court in East Texas.” That’s Adam Liptak with the New York Times reporting on the justices’ other big ruling yesterday.
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|The Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal had one simple and clear takeaway from the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to end “rampant forum shopping in patent infringement cases.” WSJ: “ANTONIN SCALIA must be smiling upstairs at the court’s return to the plain meaning of the statutory text.”
HIDDEN BUDGET
|Putting aside PRESIDENT TRUMP’S budget announcement for a second, Tony Mauro with The National Law Journal reports that for the second year in a row, Supreme Court justices met with member of the House behind closed doors to discuss their own annual budget request. No request for a public hearing on the Supreme Court budget has been made, and Mauro notes that there is unlikely to be one since the private meeting already occurred. JUSTICES STEPHEN BREYER and ANTHONY KENNEDY met on Monday with REPRESENTATIVE TOM GRAVES of Georgia.
TODAY IN HISTORY
|On this day in history, the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeals of former Nixon White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman and former Attorney General John N. Mitchell in connection with their Watergate convictions.
OTHER NEWS
Republican Redistricting is Taking a Beating in the Courts (Again)
The Washington Post“This year, federal courts have been litigating a steady stream of gerrymandering claims. And most of the electoral maps the courts have knocked down were drawn by Republicans. That’s good news for Democrats: They have an opportunity in several states to draw more favorable congressional and state legislative maps ahead of 2018 elections. And every seat counts, given the 2020 Census is right around the corner, which brings with it the opportunity in many states to draw new district maps.”
Supreme Court Rules That Disenfranchising Voters is OK...As Long as It Isn't Racist
The Root“The U.S. Supreme Court issued a devastating blow to race-based gerrymandering Monday when it ruled that North Carolina’s Legislature used racial considerations in redrawing two of the state’s voting districts. That’s the lead you’re likely to read as news outlets everywhere report on the high court’s 5-3 decision declaring that North Carolina’s Republican-controlled Legislature relied too heavily on race when it drew two congressional districts. But as with online user agreements and Steve Harvey employee memos, the devil is in the legalese-laden details.”
Will the Supreme Court Draw the Line on Gerrymandering?
The Hill“That leaves us pondering the meaning of ‘constitutional’ in the phrase ‘constitutional political gerrymandering.’ Is that a way of saying political gerrymandering is constitutional, or that it is sometimes constitutional but not others?”