SCOTUS: Upholds Gerrymandering, Strikes down Census question

... and, trump calls for a delay in the census to allow them time to come up with an acceptable or believable lie that justice roberts will OK...

 

Slate op piece on the decision:

The Supreme Court’s Partisan Gerrymandering Ruling Is a Body Blow to Our Democracy

https://slate.com/news-and-politics...rtisan-gerrymandering-rucho-common-cause.html

 

I wish Obama could have moved legislation for gerrymandering back in 09 when Dems had a super majority but it's water under the bridge now.

 

Never seen evidence that one party “gerrymanders” more than the other. Even California has some crazy looking districts.

And the citizenship question will be on the census.

 

I'm guessing you have not bothered to look into the issue much.

 

A bunch of states already have enacted non-partisan commissions to draw the lines. Republicans, amusingly, are suing over that too and that's still working it's way through the courts, from my understanding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistricting_commission

 

Interesting... will every case that the trump admin argued get similar questions?

 

Pesky U.S. Constitution...

 

Partisan Gerrymandering is now immediately an issue for 2020. Only potential solution is the DEM winning both House and the Presidency (at least they can pretend). This play into the DEM hand. Let see if the moderator pick that up tonight.

 

This will be one of the biggest tests for how bold Roberts wants to be. This was litigated only four years ago. In a 5-4, the Supreme Court upheld redistricting commissions (including those created by referendum) but the majority of that decision included the four liberals and Kennedy while Roberts was in the minority. So its probably safe to say that a majority of the Court disagrees with the Arizona ruling but the question is whether the Court is bold enough to just overrule itself so quickly.

 

The constitution wins again.

you can't be pro gun rights and against this stupid question being struck down.

 

SCOTUS ruled the census question was "perfectly legal, but Trump is bad"

https://casetext.com/case/department-of-commerce-v-new-york

 

I think that's right. Asking about citizenship could be okay if there was a reason to ask that was sufficiently important to justify the negative effect on the total count. But, there was no important reason to do it -- in fact, the Admin only wanted the negative effect, because as you say Trump is bad -- so they can't do it.

Your article argues a strawman (that the question is racist) and ignores the fact that we already collect citizen counts with other surveys. We actually know better how many citizens we have from those other surveys because they can use modern statistical methods to be more accurate instead of just counting noses like the Constitution requires of the official census.

 

It's constitutional for bad people to do constitutional things.

SCOTUS adjudicating people's motives is just an absurd pretense to reach a preferred policy outcome when the constitution won't suffice.

SCOTUS has zero authority to make a determination of efficacy. Has nothing to do with constitutionality.

 

It's funny that someone like yourself who probably rails against agency rulemaking somehow simultaneously support the idea that the Department of Commerce can just arbitrarily do whatever it wants without review.

If you go down this path, then you're handing agencies almost unlimited power. Today, an agency has to go through a long process of rationalizing rulemaking. Under your interpretation, an agency like the EPA could do something like impose a 100 mpg fuel efficiency standard on cars overnight. Today, to change CAFE standards requires an exhaustive defense of the benefits of such a rule along with an explanation of the costs and the authority of the EPA to make such a change. Under your interpretation, an agency like the EPA can just do whatever it wants with no check (other than whether Congress fully delegated that authority to the agency).

 

On gerrymandering: now that the SCOTUS has really set the states free, perhaps a flaky one like Hawaii or a crazy one like Florida can turn districting over to a a visual artist, just for the lulz.

Also, I will be advocating for all conservative Californians to be housed in the same single district, even if the land connecting each of them fluctuates minute to minute and involves nanometer thick bridges of property. We'll get 'er done, I tell you what!

 

wow...