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Why the Supreme Court’s Rulings Have Profound Implications for American Politics Why the Supreme Court’s Rulings Have Profound Implications for American Politics
(about 1 hour later)
WASHINGTON — In two rulings that bore huge implications for American politics and governance, the Supreme Court handed Republicans a key victory by refusing to halt even the most extreme gerrymandered maps and potentially gave Democrats a win by at least delaying the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census. WASHINGTON — The rulings by the Supreme Court on Thursday in bitterly contested battles over partisan gerrymandering and the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census grappled with issues fundamental to the nation’s democracy: How power is allocated, and ultimately, how much of a voice the American people have in selecting their leaders.
The two bitterly contested cases addressed an issue fundamental to the political system itself: How that system allocates power, and ultimately, how much of a voice the American people have in selecting their leaders. But far from settling these questions, the court has unleashed even higher-pitched and partisan struggles over once-settled aspects of the country’s governance, placing greater pressures on the nation’s political system.
Gerrymandered maps that entrench one party in near-unbreakable power have become rampant as courts dithered over how and whether to rein them in. Now, with a green light from the justices, Republicans have an opportunity to lock in political dominance for the next decade in many of the 22 states where they control both the legislature and the governor’s office. Gerrymandered maps were once part of an unspoken agreement between rivals that pressing for political advantage was, within limits, part of the electoral game. But in recent years Republicans, aided by sophisticated mapmaking software, have given themselves near-unbreakable power across the country.
And the decision will almost certainly force Democrats, who control 14 statehouses, to reconsider their belated crusade against gerrymandered maps and begin drawing their own — an eat-or-be-eaten response to Republican success in gaming the redistricting process. Now, with a green light from the justices, the party has an opportunity to lock in political dominance for the next decade in many of the 22 states where it controls both the legislature and the governor’s office.
The decision will almost certainly force Democrats, who control 14 statehouses, to reconsider their belated crusade against gerrymandered maps and begin drawing their own — an eat-or-be-eaten response to Republican success in gaming the redistricting process.
“Expect the abuse to be supercharged,” said Justin Levitt, an associate dean at Loyola Law School and a Justice Department official during the Obama administration. “Now the answer will be, ‘It happens everywhere.’ Expect the disease to spread.”
[Here’s what you need to know about gerrymandering.][Here’s what you need to know about gerrymandering.]
Thursday’s decision on gerrymandering “tears at the fabric of our democracy and puts the interests of the established few above the many,” said Eric H. Holder Jr., an attorney general in the Obama administration who now heads the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. The committee’s nonprofit arm financed the lawsuit that was before the Supreme Court seeking to block North Carolina’s congressional map. The justices also did not resolve what to do about adding a citizenship question to the census, which until recently was regarded as a nonpartisan ritual every 10 years for the country to obtain an accurate head count of its residents. Now it is the object of a legal firefight over charges that it is being perverted for partisan gain.
On the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census, Democrats emerged with a more positive outcome — for now, at least.
Adding a citizenship question to the census could have a profound impact on American politics, as the country relies on population figures from the census to divvy up seats in the House of Representatives and to draw political maps at all levels of government.Adding a citizenship question to the census could have a profound impact on American politics, as the country relies on population figures from the census to divvy up seats in the House of Representatives and to draw political maps at all levels of government.
The Census Bureau itself has said that adding the question would lead more noncitizens and minority residents to avoid being counted. Because most of these people live in predominantly Democratic areas, the undercount would weaken Democratic representation in states with large numbers of noncitizens, and skew the allotment of billions of federal dollars away from those areas.
[Here’s what you need to know about the debate over adding a citizenship question to the census.][Here’s what you need to know about the debate over adding a citizenship question to the census.]
The Census Bureau itself has said that adding a citizenship question would lead more noncitizens and minorities to avoid being counted. Because most of these people live in predominantly Democratic areas, the undercount would weaken Democratic representation in states with large numbers of noncitizens, and skew the allotment of billions of federal dollars away from those areas as well.
But by ruling that the Trump administration offered no credible reason for proposing the question, the justices placed a daunting hurdle before the government, which must print questionnaires and other 2020 census documents within months, if not weeks, to keep the head count on schedule.But by ruling that the Trump administration offered no credible reason for proposing the question, the justices placed a daunting hurdle before the government, which must print questionnaires and other 2020 census documents within months, if not weeks, to keep the head count on schedule.
[Read about why the Trump administration is running out of time to print the census.]
The administration would have to create a new rationale for adding the question and win the approval of a skeptical district court, which ruled that its stated reason for the question — to better enforce the Voting Rights Act — was a bald contrivance hiding some other motive.The administration would have to create a new rationale for adding the question and win the approval of a skeptical district court, which ruled that its stated reason for the question — to better enforce the Voting Rights Act — was a bald contrivance hiding some other motive.
“We are disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision today,” said Kelly Laco, a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice, which she said “will continue to defend this administration’s lawful exercises of executive power.” “We are disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision today,” said Kelly Laco, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, which she said “will continue to defend this administration’s lawful exercises of executive power.”
The Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, did not have an immediate comment.The Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, did not have an immediate comment.
After the ruling on the citizenship question, President Trump took to Twitter to question why his administration was not allowed to ask what he called “a basic question,” and said he was inquiring into whether the census could be postponed so that the justices could make a “final and decisive decision” on the matter.
But the issue could take months to resolve.
A second census lawsuit was reopened this month in federal court in Maryland, where opponents of the question claim that new evidence proves that the question is an unconstitutional effort to discriminate against Hispanics for political gain. That proceeding, which the justices made no effort to stop on Thursday, appears likely to stretch at least into late August.A second census lawsuit was reopened this month in federal court in Maryland, where opponents of the question claim that new evidence proves that the question is an unconstitutional effort to discriminate against Hispanics for political gain. That proceeding, which the justices made no effort to stop on Thursday, appears likely to stretch at least into late August.
[Read about why the political climate has made immigrant communities wary of census workers.]
In theory, the government could clear those barriers, appeal any adverse rulings and still tack the question onto the 2020 questionnaire, Cary Coglianese, a law professor who directs the Penn Program on Regulation at the University of Pennsylvania, said on Thursday. “But I struggle to see the path by which the citizenship question ends up on the 2020 census form,” he added.In theory, the government could clear those barriers, appeal any adverse rulings and still tack the question onto the 2020 questionnaire, Cary Coglianese, a law professor who directs the Penn Program on Regulation at the University of Pennsylvania, said on Thursday. “But I struggle to see the path by which the citizenship question ends up on the 2020 census form,” he added.
In their rulings on Thursday, the justices stated pointedly that their decisions were legal opinions, not political ones. “No one can accuse this court of having a crabbed view of its reach or competence,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority in the partisan maps cases. “But we have no commission to allocate political power and influence in the absence of a constitutional directive.” In their rulings on Thursday, the justices stated pointedly that their decisions were legal opinions, not political ones.
But the political subtext of the decisions was unmistakable among those affected by them. Mr. Holder said on Thursday that the ruling on partisan maps “means the Roberts court has entered a new political Lochner era.” That was a reference to a conservative court early in the last century that Justice Roberts once said was “not interpreting the law” but “making the law.” “No one can accuse this court of having a crabbed view of its reach or competence,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority in the partisan maps cases. “But we have no commission to allocate political power and influence in the absence of a constitutional directive.”
The conservative Public Interest Legal Foundation, meanwhile, placed a jab at opponents of gerrymandered maps. “The Supreme Court wisely chose to reject federal overreach into the states’ constitutional authority to conduct redistricting,” the group’s president, J. Christian Adams, said in a statement, adding that Democrats and advocacy groups had “sunk millions of donor dollars” into a losing cause to stop gerrymandered maps in the courts. But precisely because the gerrymandering and census cases were so deeply divisive, their resolution seems likely to reverberate through the political system, regardless of which political camp claimed victory.
The rulings on Thursday only raise the stakes of elections across the country next year. The focus now will be on a handful of states like Texas, North Carolina and Georgia where political control is increasingly up for grabs and the fruits of victory — control over the mapping of scores of congressional districts, not to mention state legislative seats — are especially rich.
Republicans control most of those states. But Democrats hope to break their monopoly over redistricting by winning back state legislative seats in places like Texas, where the party is nine seats away from controlling the 150-seat House of Representatives, before new maps are drawn in 2021.
One reason the citizenship question is seen as pivotal is because those same states are heavy with the noncitizens and minority residents like Hispanics that analysts say would avoid a census that sought to know their status. While Republicans have denied that politics drove the decision to add the question to the head count, evidence filed in lawsuits suggests that partisan gain was at the least a factor in the decision, and at most its central purpose.
That was reinforced this month by the disclosure of files kept by a deceased political strategist who was the Republican Party’s reigning expert on gerrymandering as a party employee and later as a paid consultant. The strategist, Thomas B. Hofeller, was the first to press the incoming Trump administration in 2016 to add a citizenship question to the census. The files showed that the previous year, he had instructed a major Republican donor on how data from the question could be used to alter the population base used in redistricting, and reduce Democratic power when maps are redrawn in 2021.
“All of this is an example of what we call constitutional hardball — measures that are entirely legal but run up against the norms for partisan advantage,” said Steven R. Levitsky, a Harvard University professor of government and a co-author of the recent book, “How Democracies Die.” “It’s basically dirty politics without being illegal politics.”
Mr. Levitsky and others say partisanship — the conviction that the other party is an enemy who must be crushed — is the driving force behind such tactics. He and other scholars say the Republican Party has embraced rule-breaking as a political tactic.
But hardball is a tit-for-tat measure, he said, and the Republicans’ flouting of the rule book is already prompting Democratic talk of similarly tough tactics like packing the Supreme Court, and has spawned a movement to override the Electoral College. And the escalating conflict increasingly leads both sides to complain that democracy has been rigged.
Repeated enough, experts say, ordinary citizens start to lose faith that the system actually works for everyone.
For a court that has increasingly struggled to convince the American public that it is above politics, Thursday’s rulings did little to tone down the divisiveness over its decisions.
The president of the conservative Public Interest Legal Foundation, J. Christian Adams, called the court’s ruling on gerrymandering a wise decision “to reject federal overreach into the states’ constitutional authority to conduct redistricting.” He added: “The Constitution doesn’t give federal courts the power to pick partisan outcomes.”
But Eric H. Holder Jr., an attorney general in the Obama administration who now heads the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said the decision “tears at the fabric of our democracy and puts the interests of the established few above the many.” The committee’s nonprofit arm financed the lawsuit that was before the Supreme Court seeking to block North Carolina’s congressional map.
Mr. Holder called the decision proof that the Roberts court had “entered a new Lochner era,” a reference to a conservative band of activist justices in the early 1900s who Justice Roberts himself once said did not interpret laws, but made them.