https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/ ... ng-1385302
However, it also rejected the Trump Regime's argument for a citizenship question on the census, while not definitively rejecting a citizenship question on the census:The Supreme Court on Thursday dashed efforts to crack down on partisan gerrymandering, ruling in two cases that attempts to gain political advantage through the redistricting process are so pervasive that allowing judges to police the practice would lead to a boundless quagmire of litigation.
The 5-4 decisions, which split the court along the usual ideological lines, is a blow to reformers, who hoped the court would set limits on political parties’ ability to rig congressional maps for favorable election outcomes — and a boon to Republicans, who control the majority of state legislatures, which draw the maps for most states, and best position the GOP to skew maps for partisan advantage in critical redistricting battles that will follow the 2020 Census .
The rulings, in cases from North Carolina and Maryland, were widely expected after the retirement last year of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who had been the court’s only Republican appointee to publicly hold out the possibility that courts could step in where districts were deliberately drawn to undercut or enhance the power of voters from one political party — an approach that some opponents have skewered as legislators picking their voters instead of vice versa.
Writing for the majority on Thursday, Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged that the maps at issue “are highly partisan, by any measure,” but he said courts were ill-equipped to step in when legislators went too far when it comes to the politically sensitive task of drawing districts.
“How much is too much?” Roberts asked. “There are no legal standards discernible in the Constitution for making such judgments, let alone limited and precise standards that are clear, manageable, and politically neutral. … No one can accuse this Court of having a crabbed view of the reach of its competence. But we have no commission to allocate political power and influence in the absence of a constitutional directive or legal standards to guide us in the exercise of such authority.”
Joining Roberts in the majority were the court's four Republican-appointed associate justices: Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
Critics of partisan gerrymandering argued that technological advances allowing mapmakers to craft districts to yield extremely precise numbers of voters of each party had made the practice more widespread and effective at virtually nullifying some votes. Challengers to such efforts said powerful computer programs also offered judges a precise and practical way to analyze redistricting plans and consider alternatives.
Justice Elena Kagan, who penned the dissent for the court’s four Democratic appointees, read portions of the opinion aloud from the bench — something justices typically do only in cases they consider highly significant. Her voice seemed to crack or tremble as she lamented that the majority of justices were abandoning their responsibility because it seemed too difficult — not because partisan gerrymandering doesn’t violate the Constitution.
After recounting the extraordinary lengths politicians in both states went to gain advantage, Kagan declared: “Is that how American democracy is supposed to work? I have yet to meet the person who thinks so.”
In her written dissent — which was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor — Kagan called the ruling an unfortunate precedent.
“For the first time ever, this Court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities,” she wrote, adding that the gerrymandered maps the courts considered in these cases “debased and dishonored our democracy.”
The specific disputes on which the justices ruled involved Democrats’ complaints about congressional districts in North Carolina and Republicans’ objections about a district in western and central Maryland.
The North Carolina map has led to the GOP’s holding 10 of the state’s 13 congressional seats over the past four elections, while scoring only a bare majority of the votes cast statewide.
The Maryland map helped Democrats pick up the traditionally Republican 6th District seat in 2012, when Republican Rep. Roscoe Bartlett was defeated after nearly two decades in Congress.
The justices sent the two cases back to the lower courts for dismissal, meaning the maps that were used for the 2018 election will almost certainly be used once more in 2020, before the next decennial redistricting cycle. It also means that congressional maps in Michigan and Ohio, which were each struck down by lower courts as Republican gerrymanders while the Supreme Court was considering the Maryland and North Carolina cases, will likely be reinstated and used for the 2020 elections.
The cases are Rucho v. Common Cause (18-442) and Lamone v. Benisek (18-726).
A year ago, the Supreme Court had two chances to clarify whether the Constitution limits partisan gerrymandering but issued narrow decisions that effectively punted on the central issue, disappointing those hoping to rein in the practice. Kennedy’s announcement days later that he was resigning from the court appeared to quash the chances that the high court would muster a majority anytime soon for a ruling empowering judges to redraw districts sharply gerrymandered along partisan lines.
The new rulings leave the minority parties in state legislatures with little leverage to affect district lines, beyond litigation that argues voters were discriminated against on the basis of race or ethnicity. The decision largely returns the debate over gerrymandering to the political realm, raising the stakes for the 2019 and 2020 elections, in which many of those state legislatures will be up for grabs.
While congressional redistricting in most states is overseen by the state legislature and governors, voters in Arizona and California have used ballot measures to put control of the process in the hands of independent commissions.
The Supreme Court upheld that sort of bypass in 2015 in a 5-4 vote in which Kennedy joined the court’s Democratic appointees. Experts said the court’s current appointees might come out differently if the current justices took up the issue again.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/suprem ... c-n1014651
Unfortunately, it looks like the Supreme Court is moving more and more towards being just another rubber-stamp for Neo-fascism, especially if they do ultimately rule in favour of the citizenship question.WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration cannot include a question about citizenship on the 2020 census form that goes to every U.S. household, giving a win to mostly Democratic populous states that said the question would discourage legal and illegal immigrants from responding and make the population count less accurate.
The court was deeply fractured on the issue, but on the section that essentially eliminated the citizenship question, the vote was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the four-member liberal wing of the court.
The court's majority said the government has the right to ask a citizenship question, but that it needs to properly justify changing the long-standing practice of the Census Bureau. The Trump administration's justification was "contrived," Roberts wrote, and did not appear to be the genuine reason for the change, possibly implying that the real reason was political.
The decision makes it difficult for the Commerce Department to justify the question and make it part of the census before the forms have to be printed in only a few weeks. But it leaves the door open for the government to try again, and some legal experts believe the government could succeed.
“It’s almost a toss up, but I think in the end the census question probably will make it on. If the Census Bureau simply says it wants the question on to get a complete count, the Supreme Court will say that’s OK in the coming weeks,” said Tom Goldstein, publisher of the SCOTUSblog website and a lawyer who argues frequently before the court.
The ruling was a setback for the Trump administration's tough position on immigration. It was also a surprise, because it appeared in April when the case was argued that the court's five-member conservative majority was prepared to rule that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross acted within his authority to add the question.
President Donald Trump tweeted Thursday afternoon that he asked lawyers whether the census can be put on hold.
"Seems totally ridiculous that our government, and indeed Country, cannot ask a basic question of Citizenship in a very expensive, detailed and important Census, in this case for 2020," he tweeted.
.....United States Supreme Court is given additional information from which it can make a final and decisive decision on this very critical matter. Can anyone really believe that as a great Country, we are not able the ask whether or not someone is a Citizen. Only in America!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 27, 2019
A census is required every 10 years by the Constitution, and the results determine the size of each state's congressional delegation. The data is also used to calculate a local government's share of funds under many federal programs.
A total of 18 states, several of the nation's largest cities and immigrant rights groups sued to block the question, saying it would make immigrants reluctant to respond to the census mailer. As a result, states with large immigrant communities could lose seats in Congress and suffer cuts in government aid programs, their lawsuit said.
Citizenship questions were asked during every census between 1820 and 1950. But from 1960 on, the government sent households a short form that contained only a few questions and did not inquire about citizenship. Both the Census Bureau and the groups behind the lawsuit agreed that the question will reduce the census response rate, especially in immigrant communities. By one government estimate, as many as 6.5 million people might not be counted.
Ross told Congress that he decided to add the question after receiving a letter from the Justice Department that said the citizenship data was needed to properly enforce federal voting laws. But he later admitted during a trial on the issue that he started thinking about the citizenship issue shortly after taking office and suggested that the Justice Department request it.
Led by New York, the states opposing the question also said Ross' directive sidestepped the Census Bureau's longstanding procedures for testing changes to the questionnaire in order to evaluate whether they would lead to an undercount. Because the citizenship question would depress minority responses, the challengers said, including it on the form would actually produce a less accurate count than leaving it off and using Social Security and IRS data to supplement the information gathered from the census form.
Five weeks after the case was argued in late April, the American Civil Liberties Union informed the court that it found evidence suggesting that the idea of including the question originated with an unpublished policy paper by a longtime adviser to the Republican Party. The government's actual goal, the group said, was to dilute the voting power of minority communities.
But the Justice Department dismissed the claim as unfounded and said none of the officials responsible for adding the question had even heard of the policy document.
