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[THREAD] So, you ask, what do today’s #CitizenshipQuestion and #Gerrymandering decisions mean?
In the CQ case, Roberts *did* find the Voting Rights Act justification for adding the question to be pretextual. But he also wrote that Commerce’s decision to add it was supported by evidence, and was not arbitrary and capricious under the APA.
In a ‘help me help you’ moment, it seems Roberts purposely left the door open for the Trump Admin. to allow him to let the question be added. When it is, it will be challenged, and we will undoubtedly do much of this over again.
This decision does not impact the ongoing Maryland case regarding the CQ, which focuses on unrelated discrimination and civil-rights claims, so a lot of litigation is left here.
In the political gerrymandering decision, Roberts issued a sweeping decision, taking the federal judiciary completely out of the business of review maps on any grounds of political chicanery.
While districts still need to be of roughly equal populations, the Court chooses to leave it up to politicians to police themselves, because that has a great track record, apparently.
While there is still the opportunity for state constitutions to serve as the basis for challenges of state maps, such as what Pennsylvania did recently, there is a practical problem...
States that are under single party control--governor and both houses--after the 2020 election could effectively freeze their existing partisan control by drawing partisan gerrymanders to preclude any realistic possibility at future losses.
Currently, 36/50 states are under single-party control, so unfettered partisan gerrymandering is not an insignificant concern.
Taken together, the 2020 election will be hugely important, along with participation in the census, regardless of whether the CQ is added.
The 2020 census will form the basis of how politicians elected over the next 2 years will draw districts--which can now be drawn to favor their own party--for use from 2022 through 2030. No one can stay home on Election Day. #YallaVote #RestoreTheVote #FairMaps #YallaCountMeIn
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