Racial gerrymandering ruled unconstitutional
The Supreme Court has predictably voted 6-3 on Callais. The court has declared that racial gerrymandering is unconstitutional but has left mostly intact the Voters’ Rights act. In a 2019 case by a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts have no authority to decide whether partisan gerrymandering goes too far. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority: “The Constitution supplies no objective measure for assessing whether a districting map treats a political party fairly.” But racial gerrymandering is a different matter – so says the court.
Callais is the Louisiana case I wrote about some time ago where a lower court ruled that Louisiana had to create a second majority minority district. It basically snaked two hundred miles seeking to find majority black areas to be placed into one district. The resulting congressman was a black democrat Cleo Fields while the previous congressman was a republican Clay Higgins who sue claiming that the gerrymander was unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated the Equal Protection Clause. The court agreed.
I had pointed out previously that if the court ruled as it did, then as many as 19 congressional districts with black democrat representatives could be in danger of being redrawn and perhaps flipping to republicans. Justice Kagan wrote the dissent, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson. “The consequences are likely to be far-reaching and grave. Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter,” Kagan wrote, referring to the Voting Rights Act. “In the States where that law continues to matter—the States still marked by residential segregation and racially polarized voting—minority voters can now be cracked out of the electoral process.”
Needless to say the democrats are livid and are threatening a nationwide effort to gerrymander republicans out of their seats, much like has been done in Massachusetts where there are no republican congressional representatives. Understand that while the court says that gerrymandering is legal, it is only racial gerrymandering that is illegal. So if republicans in Massachusetts have no representation that perfectly legal. So it would be if Virginia successfully gerrymandered the state from 6 democrats and 5 republicans to 10 democrats and one republican despite republican candidates consistently receiving almost 50 percent or more of the vote in statewide and national elections.
Will the court allow TPS to expire?
The court is currently hearing arguments over whether the Trump administration can end Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians. The administration had revoked TPS for thirteen countries and order the deportation of over 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians. In total there are over 1.3 million people in the country under TPS. Not surprisingly Justice Brown Jackson asserted that the administration’s decision was racially motivated saying “The president’s insistence that immigrants from certain countries—largely, if not almost exclusively, countries with African immigrants, black African immigrants—are not allowed, and calling these sorts of names. types of things he said about Haiti.” During his arguments, Geoffrey Pipoly, lawyer for the Haitian plaintiffs, brought up Trump’s past rhetoric about “s——– countries.” Of course, the actions by the administration are racially motivated led by Stephan Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for homeland security. Even Trump had said of Miller that he (Miller) would like everyone to look like himself. Isn’t that obvious since the only people now being admitted under TPS are white South Africans?
The argument before the court is whether the administration can legally end the protected status and begin deportation proceedings. In each case where the administration wants to end the status, the “temporary” status has expired. Previous administrations have granted a “temporary” extension to the “temporary” status. The Trump administration is not going to grant further extensions. The lawyers for the Syrian and Haitian immigrants say they are here because of war, rampant crime, and natural disasters and the situation in their countries are still dire. The administration says that is irrelevant. Indeed, several justices question whether the lower courts should have even taken up the case.
It looks like the court may agree and there will be a 6-3 ruling in the administration’s favor.
What! A Unanimous vote
Yes! As a matter of fact in this term the court has ruled on 26 cases and 6 have been a unanimous 9-0. The latest was First Choice vs Davenport where New Jersey’s Attorney General in 2023 demanded First Choice, a pregnancy center providing free ultrasounds and services other than abortions, hand over the names, addresses and phone numbers for some 5,000 donations. First Choice declined and when First Choice went to go to federal court saying that the disclosure would chill their support. The judges held that it didn’t have standing, since the subpoena was still making its way through the state system, and no judge had yet compelled the group to comply. The Supreme Court disagreed and ruled 9-0 in First Choice’s favor. Justice Gorsuch writing the opinion said “All this is more than enough to establish injury in fact which isn’t limited to tangible harm but can also arise “when a defendant burdens a plaintiff’s constitutional rights.” Gorsuch says that even if the AG were ordered to keep the First Choice donor information private, a government demand to turn it over is “enough to discourage groups from expressing dissident views.” The decision addresses only whether First Choice’s lawsuit may proceed. But the Justices obviously views New Jersey’s action as not only to investigate the pregnancy centers as much as to harass them. Isn’t it refreshing that the court’s three liberals actually agreed?
The other surprise unanimous decision was the one on ordering federal appeals courts to defer to immigration judges when reviewing asylum decisions, bolstering the executive branch’s authority in immigration cases and handing the Trump administration a win as it pushes an aggressive deportation agenda. That decision was actually written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson!
haroldblackphd.com 