Tag Archives: gerrymandering

The Raleigh News & Observer reports: North Carolina’s 2020 elections for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives must happen under new maps, a panel of judges ruled Monday evening, saying that the current Republican-drawn maps are unfair to many voters. The legislature will get to redraw the lines, the court ruled, instead of having an outside expert step in …

Reuters reports: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out a challenge to Republican-drawn electoral districts in Michigan that Democrats said were illegally configured to dilute their voting power, an action taken in the aftermath of major rulings by the justices in June prohibiting federal courts from hearing such claims. The Supreme Court’s action voided an order in April by …

USA Today reports: The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that partisan election maps drawn by North Carolina Republicans and Maryland Democrats are constitutional despite their one-sided nature. The 5-4 opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by the court’s other conservatives said federal courts may not intervene to block partisan gerrymandering. The ruling addresses the way election districts are redrawn …

NPR reports: Dirty words make it to the U.S. Supreme Court only occasionally. One of those occasions came Monday, in a case involving a clothing line named “FUCT.” The issue is whether the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office acted unconstitutionally when it refused to grant trademark protection to the brand name. And, for the justices, the immediate problem was how …

Reuters reports: The U.S. Supreme Court, approaching the end of its current term, is due to issue rulings in the coming days in major cases including the Trump administration’s bid to add a contentious citizenship question to the 2020 census and efforts by voters to curb the partisan manipulation of electoral district boundaries. The court, which has a 5-4 conservative …

The Hill reports: The Supreme Court has ruled against the Virginia House of Delegates in a racial gerrymandering case that represents a victory for Democrats in the state. In the 5-4 ruling, the justices found that the House didn’t have the standing to appeal a lower court ruling that found that the new district maps must be used ahead of …

The Associated Press reports: A federal court has ruled Ohio’s congressional map is unconstitutional and has ordered a new one be drawn for the 2020 elections. A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati ruled unanimously Friday that district boundaries were manipulated for partisan gain by Republican mapmakers and violate voters’ rights to democratically select their representatives. The …

Roll Call reports: A three-judge panel on Thursday ruled that Michigan must use new congressional and legislative maps in 2020, potentially setting up a more favorable battlefield for House Democrats, who flipped two seats in the state last fall. The federal court invalidated portions of the existing maps, drawn by the GOP-controlled legislature in 2011, pointing to an unconstitutional partisan …

Politico reports: The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases that will test the constitutionality of partisan gerrymandering — the practice of drawing voting districts to favor a particular political party or group. The congressional map being challenged in Maryland helped Democrats unseat a 20-year Republican incumbent by adding thousands of Democratic voters in the Washington, D.C. suburbs …

The Hill reports: A judge in North Carolina on Friday tossed out the state’s constitutional amendment requiring a voter ID, citing prevalent gerrymandering in the state’s General Assembly. Wake County Superior Court Judge G. Bryan Collins wrote in a ruling late Friday afternoon that the North Carolina General Assembly is so gerrymandered that its members do not truly represent the …

The Washington Examiner reports: The U.S. Supreme Court sent back a partisan gerrymandering case from Wisconsin that challenged the legislative map drawn by Wisconsin Republicans to the lower court. With its ruling, the high court tossed out a ruling from a district court and sent the case back. It ruled against Wisconsin Democrats who argued state Republican lawmakers engaged in …

Courthouse News reports: Citing the states’ long histories of suppressing the right to vote among their black voters, an organization headed by former Attorney General Eric Holder sued three states in the Deep South, accusing them of using gerrymandering to dilute the strength of their black voters. In Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana, local lawyers filed lawsuits in federal court against …

The Associated Press reports: The Michigan Court of Appeals ordered Thursday that an anti-political gerrymandering measure be placed on the November ballot, rejecting opponents’ contention that the proposed constitutional amendment is too expansive and does not list all sections that would be abrogated. The conservative group that sued vowed to appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court, which will have the …

Talking Points Memo reports: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in a tweet Wednesday linked the Trump administration’s controversial push to add a citizenship question to the Census to an approach to drawing districts that would boost Republican power. Rubio is not the first conservative to suggest that data gathered by asking about citizenship on the decennial Census could be used to …

The Washington Post reports: The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a request from Pennsylvania Republican legislative leaders to block the implementation of a redrawn congressional map that creates more parity between the political parties in the state. The practical impact is the 2018 elections in the state are likely to be held with a map much more favorable to …

Mother Jones reports: The Trump administration’s controversial pick to run the 2020 census has withdrawn from consideration to be deputy director of the US Census Bureau, according to sources close to the bureau. In November, Politico reported that the administration planned put Thomas Brunell, a political science professor who has defended Republican redistricting efforts in more than a dozen states, …

Think Progress reports: On Monday, the Supreme Court rejected an effort by Republican leaders in Pennsylvania to restore a Republican gerrymander that has allowed Republicans to dominate the state’s congressional delegation even in years when Democrats won the statewide popular vote. Last month, the state supreme court ordered new maps drawn for the 2018 election. Now that the Supreme Court …

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports: Republican legislative leaders have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s order that lawmakers redraw the state’s congressional district maps, arguing that the justices are intruding on their turf. “In short, the question in this case is whether the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is the Pennsylvania ‘Legislature’ under the federal Constitution, and the …

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Mike Stack just announced on Twitter that the state Supreme Court has ruled 4-3 that the state’s US House district maps are unconstitutional, giving the state legislature under a month to redraw the maps. The Times weighed in on the pending ruling last week: If Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court rules that the state’s congressional map must be redrawn, …

The Austin Statesman reports: The U.S. Supreme Court announced Friday that it will review lower-court rulings that ordered Texas to redraw 11 political districts found to be discriminatory. Texas officials appealed the rulings, which concluded that two congressional districts and nine Texas House districts were improperly drawn along racial lines in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Acting on the …