I’ve been fascinated by the story of the Pennsylvania gerrymandering case because it has the potential for major consequences in the next election, and the State Supreme Court appears to have little patience for putting this off too long. The GOP initially threatened to impeach the judges, but the State Supreme Court just keeps rolling along. The Philadelphia Inquirer has the latest information on it – namely, that the court issued a map of the district boundaries, and the Republicans are furious:
National Republicans say state and federal GOP officials plan to challenge Pennsylvania’s new congressional map in federal court as early as Wednesday.
“The suit will highlight the state Supreme Court’s rushed decision that created chaos, confusion, and unnecessary expense in the 2018 election cycle,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Matt Gorman said in a statement Tuesday morning. He said state and federal Republicans will sue in federal court “as soon as tomorrow to prevent the new partisan map from taking effect.”
You can find the map at the above link. And while the Republicans may be waving their stick about, history suggests it’s a little stick:
[Senate President Pro Tempore] Scarnati and [House Speaker] Turzai have tried unsuccessfully before to convince federal courts to intervene in the gerrymandering case, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and stay the order just days after the state Supreme Court overturned the congressional district map. That request was denied by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who did not refer the matter to the full court, as is often done, noted Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
“If you’re a Republican defending a map and you can’t even get Justice Alito to refer the thing to the whole court, that’s a pretty weak challenge,” he said Monday, saying he could not think of a challenge that would be successful.
While SCOTUS is looking at the Wisconsin gerrymandering case, this may be a signal that it doesn’t want to see more of these cases – or that it expects the Wisconsin decision to be decisive.
It must be particularly discouraging that Alito turned them down earlier without even requesting the rest of the court to look at the appeal. Perhaps five Justices have made it particularly clear that gerrymandering won’t be tolerated with a big decision in the Wisconsin case. Will this second appeal be more successful? Or are the Republicans just wasting money frantically defending the indefensible?
I’m looking forward to the response to their second appeal. It’ll tell us a lot about the future of gerrymandering by either party – and maybe we’ll also find out how SCOTUS hopes to measure the injustice of gerrymandering as well as remedy it, a topic I touched briefly on earlier.
