U.S. District Judge Steve Jones upheld Republican legislators’ new Georgia congressional map Thursday, a blow to House Democrats’ efforts to win the lower chamber — but was careful to avoid the most far-reaching question embedded in the case.
When Georgia Republicans crafted the new court-ordered map, they dismantled Rep. Lucy McBath’s (D-GA) district to maintain their 9-5 seat advantage in the U.S. House. McBath’s district is composed of a coalition of Asian, Latino and Black voters who typically vote the same way — Democratic — to elect the candidate of their choice.
The plaintiffs in the case argued that the Republicans’ obliteration of that district was itself a Voting Rights Act violation, raising a hugely consequential and still undecided question about whether VRA protections extend to those districts the same way they do ones dominated by a majority of one minority group. There is a circuit split on the question — the 11th and 5th Circuit Courts of Appeals have ruled that the VRA does protect such districts, though the 5th Circuit is poised to possibly overturn its own precedent on the question. The 6th Circuit has ruled the opposite way.
If Jones had addressed the question — which will likely be ultimately resolved at the Supreme Court — it would at least add another data point to one argument or the other. But in his Thursday ruling, he was careful to avoid it, suggesting that it might behoove interested parties to raise the question more explicitly in a separate case.
“There was no evidence introduced at trial regarding a coalition of minority voters,” he wrote. “In essence, Plaintiffs now seek to litigate a whole new basis for a Section 2 violation involving a combination of three minority groups at the remedial stage of their case — which up until now has involved only Black voters. This is the type of challenge to a remedial districting plan that demands development of significant new evidence and therefore is more appropriately addressed in a separate proceeding.”
He made clear that no part of his decision should be taken as commentary on that argument, but that it requires fuller briefing.
The next venue scheduled to interrogate the arguments on the reach of the VRA’s power is the 5th Circuit, which plans in May to hear a case out of Galveston County, Texas that presses on the same question. As a panel there asked the full court to hear the case for the purpose of overturning its precedent — that the VRA does protect coalitions of minority groups — it seems unlikely that its precedent is long for this world. Either way, a circuit split would endure, making it more likely that the Supreme Court will get involved.
The high court’s fingerprints, its years of dismantling the VRA, permeate Jones’ decision. He wrote elsewhere in the opinion that Georgia’s map, while legal by his lights, was clearly crafted to give Republicans a lopsided advantage — a move that the Supreme Court has blessed.
“The committee and floor debate transcripts make clear that the General Assembly created the 2023 Remedial Congressional Plan in a manner that politically protected the majority party (i.e., the Republican Party) as much as possible,” he wrote.
“However, redistricting decisions by a legislative body with an eye toward securing partisan advantage does not alone violate Section 2,” he added, citing a 2019 Supreme Court decision.
Read Jones’ ruling here:
I find the entire concept of ‘gerrymandering’ disgusting. For our legal experts - can congressional legislation make it illegal or will it take a constituional amendment?
And of course, what would our corrupted scotus say to an attempted congressional fix, since they seem to think that political gerrymanders are just fine.
I wouldn’t call myself a Constitutional expert, but there’s nothing in the Constitution about gerrymandering, so I don’t see how a constitutional amendment would be required.
I can tell you about our experience here in Ohio. We are on our third iteration of trying to fix gerrymandering now.
In 2015, the first initiative was passed that attempted to limit gerrymandering in statutory law. The legislature ignored it by amending the citizen-passed statute.
So in 2017, Common Cause and the League of Women Voters banded together to work on a constitutional amendment that would institute a non-partisan citizen commission to handle redistricting. The legislature got scared, and the initiative sponsors weren’t certain they could get the signatures to force the issue onto the ballot. Instead, they negotiated with the legislature to write a new amendment that limited the legislature’s ability to crack and pack districts. This was put before the voters and passed.
After the 2020 Census results were released, the Republicans in the state legislature came up with a map that preserved their supermajority. This was essentially the only map that sort-of met the legal requirements and maintained their dominance in the legislature. It was repeatedly ruled unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court. The citizens of Ohio were betrayed by Governor DeWine and Secretary of State LaRose who voted with the Republican legislative appointees, and blamed the Democratic commission representatives for their intransigence. Net result is that we have gerrymandered maps that will be re-drawn next year, and (absent changes in the system) will result in maps disgustingly close to our current gerrymander.
So now we have petition drive to put the matter to a vote again. This time there will be no question of dealing with the legislature, and if passed a non-partisan citizen’s commission will draw new lines in 2025 and after each decennial census.
I think we have a good chance of passing this initiative, because the Republican legislature is just out-of-control. In 2022, they passed a revision of our election laws eliminating special elections in August of odd-numbered years. The justification was that there weren’t any state-wide offices at stake, there were rarely state-level issues that can’t wait for November, they have exceedingly low turn-out, and they are expensive. Then, this year, the sprung a new single-issue August Special Election on us to raise the vote requirement to pass citizen initiatives to 60% of votes cast and increase the signature requirements to even get an initiative to the ballot. This of course was intended to gut the Reproductive Rights Amendment we passed in November (and as a by-product, cripple the Citizens-not-Politicians signature drive that was already in the planning stage).
I’ve laid my rant out before, so I’ll spare you the recitation. But we need amendments to make it clear that gerrymanders are unacceptable precisely because there is nothing in the Constitution about gerrymandering. There is no chance of doing on a national level, because the GQP will blockade any attempt in Congress, and a Constitutional Convention would be exceedingly dangerous. Since we can’t do it nationally, we’ll have to do it on a state-by-state basis.
That’s pretty much what I thought. Of course the chances of congressional legislation to deal with the problem actually passing is zero since representatives and senators from a powerful political cult would never allow it.
The cult sees gerrymandering as a significant way to leverage their minority status, not to mention that the cult is actually opposed to democracy.
Yes, that is why the Supreme Court typically rules non-racial gerrymanders are acceptable. It’s not explicitly forbidden and the Constitution only says that it’s up to the states to choose their methods (within reason*).
* for various and rather vague definitions of “reason”.