Pennsylvania Congressional District Map Is Ruled Unconstitutional
January 23, 2018 by admin
Filed under Choosing Lingerie
Comments Off
Pennsylvania is a swing state that has backed governors, senators and presidential candidates from both political parties in the last two election cycles. But as the state’s map is now drawn, Republicans control 13 of the state’s 18 House seats. Outside experts say that a nonpartisan district map could move as many as three of those seats over to the Democratic column.
The Pennsylvania ruling could also add some momentum to a clear movement in lower federal courts toward reining in the most severe partisan gerrymanders. Three-judge federal panels have already invalidated the district maps for the Wisconsin State Assembly and North Carolina’s congressional map, saying they are unconstitutionally tilted toward one party — in both cases, the Republicans. Each panel’s ruling broke new ground.
The United States Supreme Court has stayed those decisions while it considers the Wisconsin case, and one from Maryland challenging a congressional map drawn by Democrats that eliminated a longtime Republican district.
So unless the Supreme Court intervenes in the Pennsylvania case as well, the state may be the only one where a new court-ordered map will take effect in time for the midterm elections. Primaries for the state’s congressional representatives are scheduled for May 15.
In Monday’s decision, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court split along party lines in striking down the state’s House map, with the court’s five Democrats in the majority and its two Republican judges in dissent. The majority did not lay out its reasons on Monday, saying they will be explained in a later written opinion.
The original complaint, filed in June, relied heavily on an argument that the map violated the state Constitution’s freedom-of-speech guarantees, which are broader than those in the federal Constitution.
Gerrymander opponents have argued in both state and federal lawsuits that partisan redistricting violates the First Amendment by punishing one party’s voters for speaking with their votes in opposition to the other party. Among the evidence presented by the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the suit, originally brought by the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, was that as many as five seats held by Republicans would have been won by Democrats if “neutral” maps had been used, meaning maps that did not contort districts and divide communities.
Newsletter Sign Up
Continue reading the main story
Thank you for subscribing.
An error has occurred. Please try again later.
You are already subscribed to this email.
Pennsylvania is considered one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation, with congressional districts twisted into fanciful shapes, including one that has been described as looking like “Goofy kicking Donald Duck.”
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
The court order on Monday required the Legislature to submit a new map for the governor’s approval or veto by Feb. 9. If new boundaries are not approved by Feb. 15, the court said, it would decide on a map itself, relying in part on suggestions from parties to the lawsuit.
The state court appeared to be less divided on the central issue of the case than the 5-2 party-line split might suggest. Chief Justice Thomas G. Saylor, a Republican, acknowledged in his dissent that recent federal court rulings “raise substantial concerns as to the constitutional viability of Pennsylvania’s current congressional districts,” but he argued that the court should have awaited the federal Supreme Court’s decision in the Wisconsin gerrymander case, expected this spring, before making its own ruling.
“My position at this juncture is only that I would not presently upset those districts,” he wrote.
A second dissent, by Justice Sallie Updyke Mundy, endorsed Justice Saylor’s views, and added a warning that involving the State Supreme Court in redrawing the map could raise federal constitutional questions.
Republicans in the State Senate said they would ask the State Supreme Court to stay its order for new maps, and made it clear that they would try to take the matter to a federal court. But legal experts said their chances appeared slim at best, because federal courts generally have no authority to review state court decisions that exclusively involve state law. The State Supreme Court took pains to say that the state Constitution was the “sole basis” for its ruling requiring a new map.
The most likely argument for federal review, election scholars said, is that the court order violated the federal Constitution’s elections clause, which delegates authority over elections to state legislatures. The Supreme Court entertained a similar argument in Bush v. Gore, the case that determined the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. But the court later narrowly rejected the idea that state legislatures have sole authority over elections in a 2015 decision that, fittingly, dealt with redistricting in Arizona.
“This case was designed from the get-go to get to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and no further,” said Justin Levitt, an election-law scholar and associate dean at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “There are one or two exceedingly long-shot ways that Republicans might attempt to get this in front of the Supreme Court. But I would not lay odds on that.”
Monday’s decision, should it stand, adds one more cut in a calamitous year for Pennsylvania’s Republican House delegation. Representative Tim Murphy resigned his seat after he reportedly asked a woman who he had an extramarital relationship with to seek an abortion. A special election to replace him is scheduled for March 13, and the State Supreme Court order said it would be held under the existing House map.
Over the weekend, Representative Patrick Meehan was removed from the House Ethics Committee after The New York Times reported that he had settled a sex harassment complaint brought by a former aide. Mr. Meehan represents the “Goofy kicking Donald Duck” district, the Seventh, in the southeastern part of the state.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
“We’re going to have a whole series of very competitive congressional elections with a lot of uncertainty,” said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin Marshall College poll and a longtime analyst of Pennsylvania politics. If Republicans are forced to redraw the boundaries, Mr. Madonna said, they might “sacrifice” Mr. Meehan’s district to shore up other Republican districts in a way that could pass muster with the court.
Interactive Feature
Adventures in Extreme Gerrymandering: See the Fair and Wildly Unfair Maps We Made for Pennsylvania
An exercise in ruthless gerrymandering in a state already known for it.
Continue reading the main story
Share and Enjoy
Mattis urges Turkish restraint in Syria, wary of toll on civilians
January 23, 2018 by admin
Filed under Choosing Lingerie
Comments Off
JAKARTA (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis urged Turkey on Tuesday to exercise restraint in its military operations in northern Syria, which he said had disrupted the peaceful return of refugees and could prove to be an opening for al Qaeda and Islamic State.
“This could be exploited by ISIS and al Qaeda, obviously, that we’re not staying focused on them right now. And obviously it risks exacerbating the humanitarian crisis that most of Syria is going through,” Mattis told reporters during a trip to Indonesia, using an acronym for Islamic State.
Turkey’s four-day-old campaign aims to crush U.S.-backed Kurdish YPG fighters in an air and ground offensive on Syria’s Afrin region and has opened a new front in Syria’s multi-sided civil war.
Mattis said Afrin had been stabilizing, prior to the Turkish military operation.
“In the Afrin area, we had actually gotten to the point where humanitarian aid was flowing, refugees were coming back in … The Turkish incursion disrupts that effort,” Mattis said.
Ankara has long been infuriated by U.S. support for the YPG, which it sees as a domestic security threat, one of several issues that have brought relations between the United States and its Muslim NATO ally close to the breaking point.
The United States hopes to leverage the YPG’s control and that of U.S.-backed Arab fighters in northern Syria to give it more diplomatic muscle as it tries to revive U.N.-led talks in Geneva on a deal that would end Syria’s civil war.
A key U.S. negotiating position is that there must be a political transition away from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom Washington blames for the brutal conflict and accuses of using chemical weapons on his people.
Mattis said Turkey had legitimate security concerns, even as he reaffirmed the U.S. strategy in Syria.
“We’ve had our disagreements (with Turkey). But at the same time, I would just say that it is much better for Turkey and for the Kurds and for the Sunnis that we have the Americans in a position to influence the situation rather than Assad,” Mattis said.
Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Clarence Fernandez