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"The best explanation that I have seen for our distinctive combination of faith, hope and naivet concerning the governmental process." Michael Kamman, Washington Post This book makes the provocative case here that America has remained Despite decades of experience and legal precedent Found inside Page 287The Court may have given some hints in Gill v. Whitford, 138 S. Ct. 1916 (2018), where it held that plaintiffs had not proven their standing to challenge an The plaintiffs argue that their legal injury is not limited to the injury that they have suffered as individual voters, but extends also to the statewide harm to their interest in their collective representation in the legislature, and in influencing the legislatures overall composition and policymaking. Brief for Appellees 31. [27] These scholars introduced other metrics besides the efficiency gaps that equally demonstrated the partisan bias in Wisconsin's plan, which were expected to be considered to be evaluated by the Justices. 76 If SCOTUS affirms the district courts decision in Gill, Most importantly, the Court did not revisit whether partisan gerrymandering claims are justiciable. 2829, Complaint 5 (emphasis deleted). Justice Breyer dissented on still other grounds. The plaintiffs lack standing. The Court holds today that a plaintiff asserting a partisan gerrymandering claim based on a theory of vote dilution must prove that she lives in a packed or cracked district in order to establish standing. None of those facts gives judges any excuse to disregard Article IIIs demands. Justice Kagan, with whom Justice Ginsburg, Justice Breyer, and Justice Sotomayor join,concurring. The larger the number produced by that calculation, the greater the asymmetry between the parties in their efficiency in converting votes into legislative seats. To the extent that the plaintiffs alleged harm is the dilution of their votes, that injury is district specific. (The case died when the Court ruled in a related case that partisan gerrymandering claims present political issues that It requires revising only such districts as are necessary to reshape the voters districtso that the voter may be unpacked or uncracked, as the case may be. See Wis. Stat. We express no view on the merits of the plaintiffs case. The Court recognizes as much. They also submitted a Demonstration Plan that, they asserted, met all of the legal criteria for apportionment, but was at the same time almost perfectly balanced in its partisan consequences. Id., at 31, 10. They instead rested their case on their theory of statewide injury to Wisconsin Democrats, in support of which they offered three kinds of evidence. And the associational injury flowing from a statewide partisan gerrymander, whether alleged by a party member or the party itself, has nothing to do with the packing or cracking of any single districts lines. That harm arises from the particular composition of the voters own district, which causes his votehaving been packed or crackedto carry less weight than it would carry in another, hypothetical district. is one shared by Democratic voters in the State of Wisconsin. But either way, such a citizens vote carries less weighthas less consequencethan it would under a neutrally drawn map. The plaintiffs asserted that, in so doing, the legislature had infringed their rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Tuesdays hearing in Gill v. Whitford will mark the first time in over a decade that the Supreme Court has heard a major partisan gerrymandering case. The Court properly remands this case to the District Court so that the plaintiffs may have an opportunity to demonstrate a burden on their individual votes. Ante, at 21. The mapmakers also labeled certain districts as ones in which GOP seats [would be] strengthened a lot, id., at 893; 2 App. Found insideIn this collection of columns over the past decade, Jost examines the working of the Supreme Court and profiles the nine justices of the current, ideologically divided Roberts Court. We reasoned that it would be idle to hold that any political consideration taken into account in fashioning a reapportionment plan is sufficient to invalidate it, because districting inevitably has and is intended to have substantial political consequences. Id., at 752753. In October 2017, the Court heard oral argument in Gill v. Whitford, involving a similar challenge to a Wisconsin state legislative redistricting plan. The court went on to find, based on evidence concerning the manner in which Act 43 had been adopted, that one of the purposes of Act 43 was to secure Republican control of the Assembly under any likely future electoral scenario for the remainder of the decade. Id., at 896. Now that its back at full strength, the Supreme Court is no longer shying away from the blockbusters. This book brings leading scholars together to examine the performance of elections across the United States, using a data-driven perspective. 1217. Notably, the practice of gerrymandering, redistricting that draws convoluted district boundaries to favor or disadvantage certain socioeconomic groups, has frequently been used to improve the party's chances of securing elections in the future. The ACLU believes that under the Constitution, voters must choose their representatives, not the other way around. He expressly acknowledged that his district would be materially identical under any conceivable map, whether or not drawn to achieve partisan advantage. Tellingly, the Common Cause plaintiffs quickly shift to arguing they have always asserted district Id., at 307308. The specific question in this case was whether the redistricting plan, known as Act 43, intentionally and systematically diluted the voting strength of Democratic voters statewide in elections to the state legislature. Gerrymanders have thus become ever more extreme and durable, insulating officeholders against all but the most titanic shifts in the political tides. Finally, the parties presented testimony from four expert witnesses. They instead rested their case at trialand their arguments before this Courton their theory of statewide injury to Wisconsin Democrats, in support of which they offered three kinds of evidence. 161161. The defendants experts, Professor Nicholas Goedert and Sean Trende, opined that efficiency gaps alone are unreliable measures of durable partisan advantage, and that the political geography of Wisconsin currently favors Republicans because Democratswho tend to be clustered in large citiesare inefficiently distributed in many parts of Wisconsin for purposes of winning elections. 2829, 3233, Complaint 5, 15. Though they take no firm position on the matter, the plaintiffs have suggested that an efficiency gap in the range of 7% to 10% should trigger constitutional scrutiny. It should do so in order to preserve our democracy. STUDY. 478 U.S., at 116117 (plurality opinion). He therefore would have distinguished between gerrymandering for passing political advantage and gerrymandering leading to the unjustified entrenchment of a political party. Partisan-asymmetry metrics such as the efficiency gap measure something else en-tirely: the effect that a gerrymander has on the fortunes of political parties. It did so by allocating votes among the newly created districts in such a way that, in any likely electoral scenario, the number of Republican seats would not drop below 50%. Partisan gerrymandering jeopardizes [t]he ordered working of our Republic, and of the democratic process. Vieth, 541 U.S., at 316 (opinion of Kennedy, J.). That means the plaintiffsboth the four who initially made those assertions and any others (current or newly joined)now can introduce evidence that their individual districts were packed or cracked. 1 . Found inside Page 124The Court underscored its indecision in the area again recently in Gill v. Whitford (2018) and Rucho v. Common Cause (2019).59 Although he is best known for [21] The State was joined through amicus curiae briefs filed by twelve other states led by Texas. The efficiency gap, estimated to be 10% in 2014, increased to 15% based on election results.[40]. [20] The District Court ordered the State of Wisconsin to redraw their districts by November 1, 2017, as remedy for the case, using proposals brought by the plaintiffs to guide their decisions. Our power as judges to say what the law is, Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803), rests not on the default of politically accountable officers, but is instead grounded in and limited by the necessity of resolving, according to legal principles, a plaintiffs particular claim of legal right. The plaintiffs joining in this suit do not include the State Democratic Party (or any related statewide organization). The US Supreme Court just announced their decision in two high-profile, highly-charged voter redistricting cases, Gill v. Whitford and Benisek v. Donohue, on the other hand, alleges that Act 43 burdened her individual vote. And when the suit alleges that a gerrymander has imposed those burdens on a statewide basis, then its litigation should be statewide tooas to standing, liability, and remedy alike. In 1983, a Democratic Legislature passed, and a Democratic Governor signed, a new districting plan that remained in effect until the 1990 census. Ibid. The U.S. Supreme Court is starting its new term this October with many blockbuster cases on the docket. This case arose from an appeal from a District Court ruling which found that the Republican controlled Wisconsin legislatures congressional redistricting plan was drafted and enacted with the intent of systematically disadvantaging the voting strength of Democrats Math", The Supreme Court, 2017 Term Comment: Judicial Intervention as Judicial Restraint, "Gerrymandering and Conceit: The Supreme Court's Conflict With Itself", Board of Estimate of City of New York v. Morris, Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, Mississippi Republican Executive Committee v. Brooks, Houston Lawyers' Association v. Attorney General of Texas, Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama, Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Bd. The plaintiffs here have sometimes pointed to that kind of harm. included complex facts, politi-cally charged discourse, and little claritythe kinds of disputes the Court often would refuse to hear, at least until lower courts had more fully vetted the legal issues. On June 18, the Court dismissed the case for lack of standing and remanded the case to the district court for further proceedings. Gill v. Whitford . Of course, the court below and others like it are currently debating, without guidance from this Court, what elements make up a vote dilution claim in the partisan gerrymandering context. To ensure that the Federal Judiciary respects the properand properly limitedrole of the courts in a democratic society, Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 750 (1984), a plaintiff may not invoke federal-court jurisdiction unless he can show a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy. Baker, 369 U.S., at 204. Remanded to District Court for further proceedings. [5], Judge William C. Griesbach dissented, believing that there were more appropriate measures they could take to prevent partisan gerrymandering, such as requiring a non-partisan redistricting panel. Thus, voters who allege facts showing disadvantage to themselves as individuals have standing to sue to remedy that disadvantage. Id., at 921, 924. And only the courts can do anything to remedy the problem, because gerrymanders benefit those who control the political branches. In the District Court, the plaintiffs case rested largely on a particular measure of partisan asymmetrythe efficiency gap of wasted votes. And as Ill discuss, that is the most reasonable view. [24] During the oral arguments, Kennedy had appeared to side with the conservatives on asking about the legitimacy of the original plaintiffs in bringing the case, but asked both sides difficult questions relating to the redistricting approaches, leaving it difficult for observers to tell which way he would decide. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D.C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press. 17-333 (U.S.), both of which involve whether partisan gerrymandering precedent. To have standing to bring a partisan gerrymandering claim based on vote dilution, then, a plaintiff must prove that the value of her own vote has been contract[ed]. Wesberry, 376 U.S., at 7. 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