"This year's Robertsmandering armageddon has proceeded along two tracks. Unprecedented mid-decade partisan remapping-already enacted in Missouri, imminent in Ohio, North Carolina and Kansas, forthcoming in Indiana and Florida, and quite possible in New Hampshire, Kentucky and Nebraska-could push a dozen House seats into the GOP column 13 months before a midterms vote has been cast. Now there's an additional threat."
"If the U.S. Supreme Court declares Voting Rights Act protections for minority representation to be an unconstitutional use of race-as the conservative supermajority appears poised to do after oral arguments this week in Callais vs Louisiana -it could allow GOP states across the South to erase somewhere between 12 and 19 seats currently held by Black Democrats. John Roberts is the architect of both tracks."
"Poor Elbridge Gerry has gotten a bad rap. Gerrymandering is named after the long-ago Massachusetts governor, even though state legislators from his party drew the wildly creative state senate districts around Boston that would keep Federalist candidates out of power and condemn the founding father to infamy. But today's gerrymanders aren't his fault. Perhaps they should bear the name of the man responsible for them."
"That they have created an electoral bonanza for his party is either the happiest of accidents or the entire point. Much of our partisan gerrymandering nightmare can be laid at Roberts's 5-4 decision in a 2019 redistricting case from North Carolina, Common Cause vs Rucho. In that decision, Roberts ruled that partisan gerrymandering was a political issue, beyond the reach of the courts. And he shuttered the courts to future claims"
Chief Justice John Roberts' rulings and Court posture have enabled widespread partisan gerrymandering and mid-decade remapping across multiple states. Those redistricting moves could shift about a dozen House seats to the GOP well before the next midterm election. A Supreme Court decision striking Voting Rights Act protections for minority representation could allow Southern GOP-controlled states to eliminate roughly 12 to 19 seats held by Black Democrats. Roberts' 2019 5-4 decision in Common Cause v. Rucho declared partisan gerrymandering a political question beyond judicial reach and effectively closed the courts to future partisan-gerrymandering claims.
Read at The Nation
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