Pennsylvania State Legislators Will Try to Overturn New U.S. House Districts in Federal Court

Lyle Denniston writes that as early as Wednesday, February 21, Pennsylvania Republican legislative leaders will file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, arguing that under Article One, Section Four, state courts cannot be involved in drawing U.S. House districts. See this story.


Comments

Pennsylvania State Legislators Will Try to Overturn New U.S. House Districts in Federal Court — 12 Comments

  1. There could also be a due process claim.

    The court gave the legislature 18 days to produce a new map. The court failed to explain their reasoning for 16 of those 18 days.

    The court gave the governor 6 days to sign or veto the map, even though the constitution provides for 10 days.

    The court also told the executive to be prepared for a new map 4 days after the deadline. This suggests that the map had already been drawn. It most certainly was not drawn in four days over the weekend. The dissent by the chief justice says that he is not aware of any report by the special master. If the special master was working for the court, would not any of his reports be sent to chief justice as the representative of the full court?

  2. DEADLINE election dates — CRISIS Court command orders default stuff – any *LAW* be damned.

    The gangster Hacks can create new gerrymander maps on computers in about 0.1 second or less.

    PA Elephants were NOT going to submit any map that would result in any less Elephant USA Reps.

    The whole mess is a WAR between the STATIST GANGSTER OLIGARCHS on both sides
    — to get CONTROL of the USA regime = CONTROL of about 25 percent of the USA economy
    — esp who is a NET taxpayer [aka TAX SLAVE] vs who is a NET tax getter [aka TAX LOOTER].

    See the War of the Roses gangsters in England in the 1400s — many killed each other off – permitting the House of Commons to get going in the 1600s chaos — formation of Brit colonies in N. America.

    See the gerrymander oligarchs in 1860-1861 — getting about 750,000 DEAD on both sides in 1861-1865.


    PR and AppV

  3. The 3 larger districts in the middle give some idea of the major difficulty in *going west* on foot or via animals and wagons before railroads were blasted thru the many mountain ridges.

  4. No chance for this one. Procedural obstacles, including the Rooker-Feldman doctrine (which holds that a state court decision cannot be appealed to a federal district court) and preclusion principles (which hold that one who loses in one court cannot challenge the loss in another court), are insurmountable. The Republicans’ only option is to appeal to US Supreme Court, which already summarily denied a stay without even referral to the full Court.

  5. Pennsylvania must comply with the US Constitution (Article I, Section 4). States do not have have a reserved right to provide the manner of congressional elections since Congress is a creation of the US Constitution. Why wouldn’t the federal courts be able to determine if the legislature of Pennsylvania had provided for the manner of election?

  6. The gerrymander mess is totally out of control —

    http://redistricting.lls.edu/

    The Latest [spacing added]

    On February 19, 2018, the PA Sup Ct issued new congressional lines to remedy the court’s finding of a partisan gerrymander under state law.

    SCOTUS is also considering partisan gerrymandering cases under fed law in MD and WI, and a case in NC is pending appeal.

    Congressional and state Senate lines in FL were struck in 2015 as unduly partisan under FL state law. 



    This cycle, courts struck all or part of congressional plans in FL, NC, PA, TX, and VA; courts drew the lines themselves in 12 states.

    Courts struck all or part of state leg. plans in AK, AL, CO, FL, HI, ID, KY, MO, NC, PA, TX, and WI; courts drew lines themselves in 8 states.
    *****
    How many SCORES/HUNDREDS of cases wherein a Court did a USA Reps gerrymander map since 1964 ???
    ****
    PR and AppV — to prevent Civil WAR 2.

  7. I agree with Mark Brown. This appeal will go nowhere. But, they will ride it for as much as they can to raise money, bring out the base and provide them with an excuse when they get thumped in the midterm elections.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.