NORTH CAROLINA TOSSES ITS CONGRESSIONAL GERRYMANDER | Dude, Where’s My Car? | Republicans Waffle On States’ Rights Doctrine
October 29, 2019
BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD
|Pete Williams with NBC News reports that a three-judge state panel ruled yesterday that North Carolina cannot use the existing maps for its congressional districts in next year’s elections, declaring them to be invalid partisan gerrymanders. He writes, “The ruling was a victory for state Democrats who lost a battle when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that such challenges were beyond the authority of federal courts to referee. So the fight resumed in state court, citing violations of North Carolina’s constitution.” The court order bars use of the current map for coming elections, including the presidential primary.
TO BE, RATHER THAN TO SEEM
|Michael Wines with The New York Times explains the North Carolina case and notes, “The House map drawn by Republican legislators in 2016 all but guaranteed the party’s control of 10 of the state’s 13 House districts, even though voters’ political preferences are split almost evenly between the two major parties.” He reports that the three-judge panel said the map violated North Carolina’s Constitution and its guarantee of freedom of speech and assembly and equal protection under the law, as well as a guarantee of free elections that does not appear in the federal Constitution.
HOT POTATO
|“This is a remarkable turn of events,” writes Mark Joseph Stern with Slate about North Carolina’s congressional gerrymander. “The U.S. Supreme Court refused to invalidate this exact same gerrymander less than four months ago in Rucho v. Common Cause. In doing so, though, the majority tossed the hot potato to state courts—and the North Carolina judiciary has shown that these courts are perfectly capable of redressing political redistricting. North Carolina’s litigation is a test case for the fight against partisan gerrymandering post-Rucho, and it has been a triumph for voting rights.”
DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR?
|Tom Davies with The Associated Press reports that despite a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year, an Indiana man who had his Land Rover seized still hasn’t gotten his car back.
POD DU JOUR
|On a new episode of SCOTUS Deep Dive, hosts Kimberly Robinson and Jordan Rubin break down the legal saga surrounding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that’s granted temporary protections to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. They also interview a lawyer—himself a DACA recipient— who signed onto a brief challenging the Trump administration’s move to undo Barack Obama’s executive action.
SCOTUS VIEWS
So Much For States’ Rights: Trump Asks The Supreme Court To Block California’s “Sanctuary State” Law
Vox“California, in other words, is not just an important immigration case. It is, if the court takes it up, an integrity test for the Supreme Court’s Republican majority. The core question in California is whether the court will exempt the Trump administration’s deportation policies from a states’ rights doctrine known as ‘anti-commandeering,’ which typically prohibits the federal government from giving orders to state officials. For the last quarter century, conservatives were all about anti-commandeering. The Trump administration’s argument suggests that they’re more flexible about the principle now that this particular Republican president is in power.”
The Supreme Court Is On Its Way To Helping Conservatives Dismantle The Administrative State
The Washington Post“Former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon has proclaimed that he wants to dismantle the administrative state. The Supreme Court recently accepted a case that could help conservatives achieve that long-sought goal.”