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[nintendoman58]

What the title says.

On Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court corrected a serious error by a lower federal court that, if allowed to spread throughout the judiciary, could have significantly bolstered future attempts to draw gerrymandered districts.

Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Board of Elections concerns 12 Virginia state legislative districts that were allegedly drawn as racial gerrymanders. Each district was drawn to ensure that black voters would make up at least 55 percent of the district’s voters. The state claims it did this in order to comply with the Voting Rights Act as it stood prior to the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision gutting much of the law.

Since the lower court’s error has now been corrected, an otherwise illegal map will not survive judicial scrutiny simply because it looks nice. That’s good news for opponents of gerrymandering — especially if the Supreme Court ever comes around to the view that partisan gerrymandering (as opposed to racial gerrymandering) is unconstitutional.

A legal rule that enshrines compliance with traditional criteria as a defense to a gerrymandering lawsuit threatens to entrench the GOP’s dominance in the redistricting wars, even if the justices eventually started striking down partisan gerrymanders. This is not an academic question, moreover, as the Supreme Court is likely to review a lower court decision striking down Wisconsin’s state assembly maps as an unconstitutional gerrymander in its next term.

Keep fighting the good fight folks. The victories are still there.

 

[Dead Man]

Well that's something at least.

 

[Piano]

An extremely narrow ruling, but hopefully Kennedy will come around when the Wisconsin case comes up. Gerrymandering is a perversion of democracy, whether it's Republicans or Democrats drawing the maps.

 

[JHoNNy1OoO]

An extremely narrow ruling, but hopefully Kennedy will come around when the Wisconsin case comes up. Gerrymandering is a perversion of democracy, whether it's Republicans or Democrats drawing the maps.

Give me comp algorithms with as few human instructions as possible.

 

[Protein]

Gerry Mander needs to be impeached.

 

[FyreWulff]

So if I'm reading that right, the push to gut the voting rights act gutted backfired in that they now have less control over drawing districts?

 

[Septimus Prime]

Give me comp algorithms with as few human instructions as possible.

It will be quite a day when automation finally goes after politicians' jobs.