{"id":14358,"date":"2018-02-20T18:52:01","date_gmt":"2018-02-21T00:52:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=14358"},"modified":"2018-02-20T18:52:01","modified_gmt":"2018-02-21T00:52:01","slug":"when-you-hate-the-rules-change-the-judges-round-ctd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/02\/20\/when-you-hate-the-rules-change-the-judges-round-ctd\/","title":{"rendered":"When You Hate The Rules, Change The Judges \u2018Round, Ctd"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>, but the State Supreme Court just keeps rolling along.\u00a0The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/b><\/i>\u00a0has the\u00a0latest\u00a0<\/a>information on it – namely, that the court issued a map of the district boundaries, and the Republicans are\u00a0furious<\/i>:<\/p>\n

National Republicans say state and federal GOP officials\u00a0plan to\u00a0challenge Pennsylvania\u2019s new congressional map in federal court as early as\u00a0Wednesday<\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe suit will highlight the state Supreme Court\u2019s rushed decision that created chaos, confusion, and unnecessary expense in the 2018 election cycle,\u201d National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Matt Gorman said in a statement\u00a0Tuesday<\/span><\/span>\u00a0morning. He said state and federal Republicans will sue in federal court \u201cas soon as\u00a0tomorrow<\/span><\/span>\u00a0to prevent the new partisan map from taking effect.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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:<\/p>\n

[Senate President Pro Tempore] Scarnati and [House Speaker] Turzai have tried unsuccessfully before to convince\u00a0federal courts to intervene in the gerrymandering case,\u00a0asking the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and stay the order<\/a>\u00a0just days after the state Supreme Court overturned the congressional district map.\u00a0That request was denied by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.<\/a>, who\u00a0did 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re a Republican defending a map and you can\u2019t even get Justice Alito to refer the thing to the whole court, that\u2019s a pretty weak challenge,\u201d he said\u00a0Monday<\/span><\/span>, saying he could not think of a challenge that would be successful.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While\u00a0SCOTUS\u00a0<\/b><\/i>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.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

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\u00a0SCOTUS\u00a0<\/b><\/i>hopes to measure the injustice of gerrymandering as well as remedy it, a topic I touched briefly<\/a> on earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14359,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14358\/revisions\/14359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}