On February 6, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order in North Carolina v Covington, 17A790. The lower 3-judge U.S. District Court had determined that some of the legislative district boundaries represent an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The 3-judge court had hired an expert to draw new boundaries. The state asked the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a stay of the lower court ruling.
The U.S. Supreme Court response allows some of the newly drawn legislative districts to be implemented this year, but in certain other districts, the boundaries drawn by the legislature will be used in 2018. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/020618zr1_1b8e.pdf
(ORDER LIST: 583 U.S.)
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2018
ORDER IN PENDING CASE
17A790 NORTH CAROLINA, ET AL. V. COVINGTON, SANDRA L., ET AL.
The application for a stay presented to the Chief Justice and by him referred to the Court is granted in part and denied in part. The District Court’s order of January 21, 2018, insofar as it directs the revision of House districts in Wake County and Mecklenburg County, is stayed pending the timely filing and disposition of an appeal in this Court.
Justice Thomas and Justice Alito would grant the application for a stay in its entirety.
Justice Ginsburg and Justice Sotomayor would deny the application for a stay in its entirety.
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PART OF THE ONGOING GERRYMANDER CHAOS.
Your description is misleading.
The federal court had made its original finding in August of 2016. They decided that this was too late for the November 2016 elections, but instead ordered that special elections be held in 2017. This would require that terms would be truncated from two years to one year.
The reason that the decision was delayed until 2016, was that the districts had been pre-cleared under Section 5 of the VRA, and upheld by the North Carolina courts (under both the North Carolina and US Constitution). The lawyers then had to recruit a new set of plaintiffs so that they could retry the case in federal court. The SCOTUS eventually upheld the violation of the 14th Amendment, which forbids assigning people to districts on the basis of their race. Section 2 of the VRA in enforcing the 15th Amendment, requires assignment of voters to districts on the basis of race. It is basically impossible to comply with contrary laws and court decision. But the SCOTUS slammed the district court hard for ordering special elections. Since then, the court has been sulking.
In redrawing the districts, the legislature did not consider race at all. The court rushed them to do it, and then took several months to review it. They suggested that they had misgivings about some districts, but refused/failed to issue an opinion that might be complied with, or appealed. Instead they hired a special master to draw new boundaries. The legislature was instructed to comment on “fixes” for things which the court had not ordered to be “fixed”.
After the SCOTUS stayed the congressional political gerrymandering case, the court in the legislative case belatedly issued its opinion (the three-judge panels in the two cases overlap).
The plaintiffs made several claims:
(1) That the legislature failed to fix the equal protection claims in a few districts (in most of the districts originally declared unconstitutional, the plaintiffs did not object to the changes, and the court said they would presume them to be constitutional);
(2) That they violated the North Carolina Constitution, with regard to how they divided certain counties. The federal court said they could not figure out the NC Supreme Court Stephenson decisions (I give them credit for this, since the Stephenson decisions don’t actually make sense); and
(3) They violated the North Carolina Constitution by changing some districts in Mecklenburg and Wake, when they didn’t have to. The federal court was incompetent to determine this, and this was the part of the decision that the SCOTUS has stayed.
The 1965 VRA is a giant perversion of the 15th Amdt.
Elephant U.S. Grant barely won in the Nov 1868 Prez election in several marginal States — some having lots of black ex-Union army/navy men.
Thus the major panic to propose the 15th Amdt in the Congress lame duck session in Jan-Feb 1869.
The 15th Amdt is ONLY about qualifications to be an Elector-Voter —
NOT rigging election results by racial packing of districts.
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PR and AppV
Another Republican rant by Mr. Riley making a simple matter complex. Richard got it right. The part stayed is because of jurisdictional concerns, I suspect, over the state constitution. Jurisdiction, however, can present a difficult federal issue and the problem can be waived by the state.
BAN and CoFOE are supporting single-winner districts under ranked choice voting which guarantees the largest civic group to win 100% of the time, this insuring one party rule, guaranteed.
Are you interested in pure proportional representation which makes elections more fair and which lowers the election thresholds for diverse interest groups?
The United Coalition has been using pure proportional representation for more than twenty-three consecutive years and pure proportional representation works fine.
http://www.international-parliament.org/ucc.html
The original finding was NOT that it was a racial gerrymander, but rather that race predominated in the drawing of 28 districts. The State offered a defense that they were trying to comply with Section 2 and Section 5 of the VRA. It was widely believed at the time that majority minority districts had to be created whenever possible, and the map was pre-cleared by Eric Holder’s DOJ.
The Supreme Court did slam the district court. Go (re)-read the SCOTUS ‘Covington’ decision from June 2017.
Because of how the North Carolina Constitution has been interpreted with regard to county groupings (see Stephenson decisions) remediation of the 28 districts, required redrawing up to 81 of 120 House districts, and 36 of 50 senate district.
The plaintiffs asserted that the state had not removed the predominance of race in (re)drawing of four of the 28 districts. For example, if the state tried to ensure that a black Democrat could win re-election, that would mean that they were retaining vestiges of the original race sorting, by including a majority black area of town where the district’s incumbent happened to live, so that she could run for re-election.
The remedy proposed by the special master paired a black Democrat and a white Republican in a likely Republican district. He offered an alternative that would place the white Republican in a predominately black district, and leave the black Democrat in the predominately white district, thus ensuring both would not be re-elected, but would avoid their facing each other.
The court agreed with the plaintiffs and ordered that four districts be redrawn. This required that at least one adjacent district also be redrawn. But in some cases the changes are superficial. They are unlikely to change the result of the election, or the partisan makeup of the legislature.
The plaintiffs also claimed that eight districts violated the North Carolina Constitution. Five of these were because the plaintiffs said that they did not have to be redrawn because it was an unconstitutional mid-decade redistricting. That is was OK/necessary to redraw 112 districts, but these five which were Wake and Mecklenburg could not be redrawn. The district court agreed, and returned the five districts to their 2011 form, but also required re-redrawing of adjacent districts. It is these five districts along with the adjacent districts that were stayed (on a 7:2 bipartisan vote).
There were two districts that the plaintiffs claimed violated the Stephenson provisions. The federal district court decided that they could not interpret what the North Carolina Supreme Court meant. The plaintiffs also suggested one district was non-compact. The federal court could not find anything in the North Carolina Constitution that applied.
So let’s keep score;
North Carolina has 170 legislative districts, 120 House and 50 Senate.
The federal court found 28 violated equal protection on the basis of race sorting.
The legislature redrew 117 districts; 53 were left intact from the 2011 boundaries.
The plaintiffs challenged 12 of the 117 new districts. The federal court rejected three of these challenges.
The federal court ruled that the legislature should not have redrawn five districts, and instead re-redrew adjacent districts. But this has been stayed.
The federal court ruled that four districts continued to be based on 2011 districts where race had predominated. The court redrew these districts, along with adjacent districts. The changes in Cumberland and Sampson are truly inconsequential. The SCOTUS declined to stay the court-imposed changes.
Summary:
170 districts total.
53 districts unchanged from 2011.
109 districts redrawn by legislature in 2017.
8 districts re-redrawn by federal district court in 2018.
162 is a much larger number than 8.
50 pack/crack gerrymander districts (concentration camps)
+ 120 pack/crack gerrymander districts (concentration camps)
= 170 pack/crack gerrymander districts (concentration camps)
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PR and AppV