Jonathan Turley Defends Virginia Redistricting Opinion By Refusing To Explain It - Above the Law

"The court found that effort was not only unconstitutional, but "wholly unprecedented in Virginia's history." It characterized the state's position as "a story of the tail wagging the dog that has no tail." While some of us had previously expressed skepticism over the rushed effort to circumvent the state constitution, the media almost exclusively relied on liberal experts who predicted the new districts would be upheld."

"Technically, voters were asked to vote on a constitutional amendment allowing the state legislature to create new maps in response to Donald Trump asking Texas (and other Republican-controlled state governments) to redraw their maps to dilute Democratic constituencies. The Virginia constitution requires a proposed amendment to pass the state legislature twice - in two different sessions - before appearing on the ballot. At that point, the amendment still requires the support of a majority of voters in a statewide election."

"Virginia did each of those things. Virginia's supreme court spent 30 pages inventing an alternate reading of that process and tossed out the results of the election. And, like clockwork, Jonathan Turley went to the NY Post to explain why the state court was right. Except... somehow over the course of almost 800 words, he doesn't ever explain the actual decision."

"Normally, the role of a legal analyst involves at least a nod to the law, but Turley adopts a post-modern view of legal analysis that skips over such a bummer. In all fairness, to Turley, the Virginia Supreme Court struggled to articulate a coherent theory itself, and the professor may have decided it would be too embarrassing to include the majority's actual opinion. The relevant language of Article XII, Section 1 requires a"

A majority of Virginia’s Supreme Court invalidated a statewide election that approved new congressional maps. Voters had been asked to approve a constitutional amendment permitting the state legislature to create new maps in response to requests from Donald Trump to redraw maps in Republican-controlled states to dilute Democratic constituencies. The Virginia constitution required the amendment to pass the legislature twice in two separate sessions before reaching the ballot, and it also required majority voter approval statewide. The court rejected the results, finding the effort unconstitutional and unprecedented in Virginia’s history. The court described the state’s justification as an inversion of constitutional structure, using characterizations that criticized the attempt to circumvent required procedures.

Read at Above the Law