Thread by @tomTMwolf

I spent the (whole) morning at the Supreme Court for today's North Carolina and Maryland partisan gerrymandering cases. A few observations for @BrennanCenter 👇#FairMaps #ncpol

An optimistic read on the day's proceedings was that the Court was in problem-solving mode. Whether the Court will SOLVE the problem is still an open question--as it is at the end of any argument.

Why do I say "problem-solving mode"?

Well, for starters, the Justices spent no time on purported escape hatches that the gerrymanderers' attorneys offered--like standing (that is, are these the right plaintiffs?) or technicalities surrounding summary judgment in the Md. trial court.

The Justices also didn't want to spend any real time on the historical arguments that formed a huge part of Paul Clement's attempted defense of the NC gerrymander. Justice Sotomayor cut that off with the quickness.

(Justice Sotomayor was right to do so, BTW. Clement's briefing on the history flies in the face of what actual, credible, leading historians have repeatedly told the Court bit.ly/2JHUK47 and what everyone knows from basic high school US history)

They also spent no time on whether partisan gerrymandering claims should be district-specific or state-wide, something that usually eats up a lot of bandwidth in legal debates about gerrymandering.

And they shut down Steven Sullivan (from the MD Attorney General's office) when he tried to offer a justification for the MD map. Here's Justice Kavanaugh putting a stop to that.

The end result? The Justices were able to focus on the merits (for once): what's the right test, how would the right test respond to other cases, what are the policy implications of choosing one test over another, etc.

There were undoubtedly some sideshows here. For one, Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh seeming to float the idea that state legislatures, Congress, ballot initiatives, etc. could fix the problem.

But, as @Tierney_Megan pointed out, Justice Kagan showed-up the problems this argument posed for several Justices' not-too-subtle suggestions that the Arizona Independent Redistricting case (which blessed commissions) was wrongly decided. talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/justices-we…

The end result? The Justices ended up spending a lot of time talking about the merits of various constitutional tests.

The Court has a huge amount to work with in these cases: very extreme facts; a range of legal standards--some proposed by the plaintiffs, some by amici (bit.ly/2Y2oMTA), others by the Justices themselves; and some time until the end of the term.

If the Court wants to do something here, it is fully equipped to do so.

Now, we wait and see. The opinions should arrive by the end of the term in June.

Thanks for reading. For more on these cases, check out @BrennanCenter guide: brennancenter.org/gerrymandering…

And stay tuned from more for our redistricting team over the next few weeks. We've been super busy, cheffing up a few marvelous things...