The U.S. Supreme Court, which wrongly created the problem of partisan redistricting, must now decide if racial redistricting is allowed. It is not and therefore the effort by Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Republicans to wring another five safe congressional seats out of a highly unusual mid-cycle redistricting effort directed explicitly by Donald Trump must be overturned.
That was the ruling of Trump-appointed Texas Federal Judge Jeffrey Brown, writing for a panel of three judges, who pointed out that the Trumpified Justice Department had all but demanded that the state redraw maps to ax a number of racial minority-majority districts, leaving an obvious paper trail that this was in addition to a partisan gerrymandering a racial one.
That distinction is key because, while the Supreme Court has inexplicably signed off on overt partisan district-drawing, it has drawn the line (pun intended) at efforts to openly disenfranchise voters based on race.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has quickly appealed the Brown order to the top court and the briefs for the civil rights that sued over Abbott map are due tomorrow.
Texas will try to prove to the Big Nine that while the Abbott map is partisan, which is allowed, it is not racial. But that’s already been established by Judge Brown. Should the Supreme Court do the right thing and uphold Brown, the Texas GOP gambit, instigated by Trump, will have failed.
That should really be the end of this sordid ordeal, not only in Texas but in states across the country that followed its lead in an unprecedented mid-cycle scramble to shore up a GOP majority in Congress, forcing Democratic states to respond in kind. This really is a race to the bottom, a horrible precedent that takes direct aim at the very concept of electoral democracy in the United States.
As we’ve said before, all of this maneuvering is predicated on the idea that state Republicans are going to be able to create the safe districts that they want, but is that a guarantee? If they’re spending their time openly spitting in the face of their own voters and chipping away at American democracy instead of solving the real issues that affect their constituents, perhaps they will ultimately lose those voters, no matter precisely they try to draw their districts.
Do GOP legislators really want to take that gamble while pushing Democrats to establish their own safer blue districts in states like California ahead of a midterm that promises to be a Democratic wave election? We know that the MAGA movement seems to have no compunctions about cheating and targeting our democratic system, but even from a purely strategic standpoint, this does not seem like a great idea at a moment when Trump’s approval ratings have plunged to record lows.
It would be better for everyone to abandon these plans altogether. Brown ordered Texas to return to its 2021 maps, and every other state should do the same; wait until the 2030 census to revisit this.
Not that the status quo now is ideal. The Supreme Court erred in signing off on blatant partisan gerrymandering, whether done following the normal decennial census schedule or off cycle, which we are seeing now.
The ability to engage in openly partisan gerrymandering still gives too much leeway to state elected officials to select their own voters as opposed to the other way around. We hope that the court will realize its foibles and reconsider that question.
