- Joined
- Apr 18, 2013
- Messages
- 94,073
- Reaction score
- 82,300
- Location
- Barsoom
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Independent
Supreme Court Upholds District Lines in Texas
If this topic was covered in another thread here at DP, my apologies.
Hardly surprising, the conservative (5/4) Supreme Court of Donald Trump rules that gerrymandering is just fine as long as the racial minority is the population group being disenfranchised.
6/25/18
The Supreme Court sided with Texas Republicans Monday, ruling that the 2013 redrawing of legislative and congressional maps was not racially motivated in all except one case. The 5-4 decision was made along party lines, with the conservative majority, led by Justice Samuel Alito, authoring the court’s opinion. This decision effectively negates a three-judge panel’s conclusion last summer, which stated several district lines were unconstitutional, intentionally discriminating against minority voters. In a concurring opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the conservative judges argued that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 “does not apply to redistricting.” The four liberal Supreme Court justices published a harsh dissent. Written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the opinion argued that with this decision, the Supreme Court “goes out of its way” to allow racially discriminating district lines to persist in Texas. “This disregard of both precedent and fact comes at serious costs to our democracy,” wrote Sotomayor. “It means that, after years of litigation and undeniable proof of intentional discrimination, minority voters in Texas—despite constituting a majority of the population within the State—will continue to be underrepresented in the political process.”
If this topic was covered in another thread here at DP, my apologies.
Hardly surprising, the conservative (5/4) Supreme Court of Donald Trump rules that gerrymandering is just fine as long as the racial minority is the population group being disenfranchised.