A dramatic hour at the Supreme Court on Tuesday left the most crucial question unanswered: Does Justice Anthony Kennedy believe that there is a clear method to identifying when a partisan gerrymander is so extreme that it is undemocratic and unconstitutional? The much anticipated oral arguments in Gill v. Whitford did make it clear that none of the four conservative Justices seems likely to be swayed by even the most simple and revealing tests. Chief Justice John Roberts dismissed arguments against partisan gerrymandering as so much “sociological gobbledygook.” Justice Samuel Alito, while conceding that gerrymandering may be “distasteful,” brushed aside measures for preventing it as unmanageable, unreliable, or too confusing. The newest Justice, Neil Gorsuch, compared gerrymandering to his homemade turmeric steak rub: “A pinch of this, a pinch of that.”
The four liberal Justices, meanwhile, appeared eager to embrace what could be the Court’s best and final chance to set limits on a political party’s ability to use sophisticated technological tools to draw electoral maps in ways that would give it decade-long advantages in state legislatures and Congress. “If you can stack a legislature in this way, what incentive is there for a voter to exercise his vote?” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked. “The result is preordained in most of these districts. Isn’t that what becomes of the precious right to vote?”
This case emerged as a challenge to Wisconsin’s State Assembly districts, which were painstakingly drawn by Republicans in 2011 to maximize partisan advantage, and which have reliably delivered more than sixty per cent of the seats in the Assembly to the G.O.P., even in a year when Democratic candidates earned more votes. Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked how gerrymandering aided democracy, asking, “It’s O.K. to stack the decks so that for ten years, or an indefinite period of time, one party—even though it gets a minority of votes—can get the majority of seats?”
Full Article: Who Will Justice Kennedy Believe When It Comes to Gerrymandering? | The New Yorker.