SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) — Maryland’s attorney general on Thursday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review an order for state officials to draw up a new congressional redistricting plan that isn’t tainted by partisan gerrymandering.
Attorney General Brian Frosh’s office also filed a separate request for the redistricting case to remain on hold until the Supreme Court acts on the state’s appeal.
A Nov. 7 ruling by a panel of three federal judges orders the state to submit a new map by March 7. Otherwise, the court said it will appoint a commission to produce a redistricting plan for use in the 2020 congressional election.
In a court filing Thursday, Frosh’s office argued the judges’ order should be suspended pending the outcome of the Supreme Court appeal “to avoid potentially contradictory results or needless expenditure of public resources.”
Several Republican voters sued over the boundaries of one of Maryland’s eight congressional districts, claiming state officials unfairly redrew it in 2011 to favor Democrats.
The Supreme Court reviewed the case before deciding in June to refer it back to the lower court for a decision, effectively allowing the 2011 map to remain in place for last week’s midterm elections.
Attorneys from Frosh’s office noted the Supreme Court could address the issue of partisan gerrymandering again during its current term.
“Any further guidance from the Supreme Court will be important to ensure that, even if this Court’s order is affirmed, state lawmakers do not redraw Maryland’s electoral map for 2020 using a standard that is not the one ultimately adopted by the Supreme Court,” they wrote.
The panel hearing the case in U.S. District Court in Maryland said the state must redraw the 6th congressional district’s lines using “traditional criteria for redistricting,” showing regard for “natural boundaries.”
The decision, written by 4th U.S. Circuit Court Judge Paul Niemeyer, says the state’s 2011 congressional map removed roughly 66,000 Republican voters from the 6th district and added around 24,000 Democratic voters, “bringing about the single greatest alteration of voter makeup in any district in the Nation following the 2010 census.”
Redistricting maps are drawn by the governor and approved by the state’s General Assembly, which is currently controlled by Democrats.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, said in a statement last week that the judges’ decision confirms that Maryland has “the most gerrymandered districts in the country.”
Niemeyer is a Reagan appointee then HW appointee and now Trump loyalist who dissented when the appeals court upheld an injunction against Trump’s travel ban. However, don’t get too excited yet about this somehow blowing up in the GOP’s face. What I expect the Fascist Five to do is overturn this. Why? Because they DESPERATELY want to rule that gerrymandering is ok if it is partisan gerrymandering…and as long as any disparate impact on minorities or other protected classes is “merely incidental” or some shit like that. I fully expect them to bemoan that ruling otherwise, i.e., ruling to protect minorities against gerrymandering them out of voting power, is oh so unfair because it only favors one side etc. This is the core of Roberts’ nonsensical philosophy on discrimination, affirmative action and legislation/law designed to protect minorities…a conniving, intellectually dishonest ideologue when it comes to the subject and who makes tautological quips that ignore practical reality such as “the only way to stop discrimination is to stop discriminating” and who pretends systemic, deeply institutionalized racism is over in Amurikkka etc.
Can we not get a panel of geographers and geographical information systems professionals to do this and get it out of the hands of the political types?
Not even close, asswipe.
Consider Ohio: Democratic candidates for Congress received 2,047,760 votes of the 4,095,557 votes cast. That’s almost bang-on 50% of the votes cast (49.995% if you want to be pedantic about it.) How did the races break? Twelve to three, in favor of the Republicans. If the districts were drawn to be competitive, we’d expect the break to 8-7 or 9-6 and to flip among the parties. If it were a coin toss, we’d expect a 12-3 break in favor of the Republicans less than 2% of the time. Instead, we now have four straight elections under this gerrymandered map where the Republicans get 3/4 of the seats with 1/2 of the vote.
I understand that Maryland’s congressional maps are unfair. It’s just that I don’t care, because Republicans have made it necessary to play this game. Get the Republicans in other states with egregiously bad maps to start acting right first and get the Republicans who’ve already been slapped down in NC and WI to start complying and then maybe we can talk about it.