Seawytch
Information isnt Advocacy
Texas Brags To Court That It Drew District Lines To Increase The Republican Partys Electoral Prospects
In their rush to prove they weren't being racist when they redrew their lines, Texas may have allowed us to revisit Gerrymandering at the SCOTUS level...
Its not exactly a big secret that Texas Republicans drew their states district lines in order to maximize the weight of Republican voters and minimize the voting strength of Democrats. Still, this isnt normally something that a states top legal officer openly admits to in a brief filed with a federal court. Nevertheless, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) is so confident that the courts will let Texas Republicans get away with rigging elections that he openly brags about his fellow Republicans efforts to do so in an official court filing. According to a brief Abbott filed earlier this month, n 2011, both houses of the Texas Legislature were controlled by large Republican majorities, and their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Partys electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats.[...]
Texas is right, as far as it goes, that the purpose of the Voting Rights Act is to prevent race discrimination, not partisan gerrymandering. But that shouldnt mean that the state is out of the woods. Partisan gerrymandering may not violate the VRA, but it violates the First Amendment, which prohibits laws that engage in viewpoint discrimination. When Texas draws lines to maximize Republican influence and minimize that of Democrats, it is essentially saying that people who hold one viewpoint should have their votes count more than people who espouse a different viewpoint. That is not allowed.[...]
Justice Kennedy, whos cast the key fifth vote permitting such gerrymandering to continue unchecked, has also said that he will not completely rule out striking down a partisan gerrymander in the future. Citing one extreme example of a law he would strike down, Kennedy wrote in his concurring opinion in Vieth v. Jubelirer that f a State passed an enactment that declared All future apportionment shall be drawn so as most to burden Party Xs rights to fair and effective representation, though still in accord with one-person, one-vote principles, we would surely conclude the Constitution had been violated.
Texas is right, as far as it goes, that the purpose of the Voting Rights Act is to prevent race discrimination, not partisan gerrymandering. But that shouldnt mean that the state is out of the woods. Partisan gerrymandering may not violate the VRA, but it violates the First Amendment, which prohibits laws that engage in viewpoint discrimination. When Texas draws lines to maximize Republican influence and minimize that of Democrats, it is essentially saying that people who hold one viewpoint should have their votes count more than people who espouse a different viewpoint. That is not allowed.[...]
Justice Kennedy, whos cast the key fifth vote permitting such gerrymandering to continue unchecked, has also said that he will not completely rule out striking down a partisan gerrymander in the future. Citing one extreme example of a law he would strike down, Kennedy wrote in his concurring opinion in Vieth v. Jubelirer that f a State passed an enactment that declared All future apportionment shall be drawn so as most to burden Party Xs rights to fair and effective representation, though still in accord with one-person, one-vote principles, we would surely conclude the Constitution had been violated.
In their rush to prove they weren't being racist when they redrew their lines, Texas may have allowed us to revisit Gerrymandering at the SCOTUS level...
