John Roberts Is Responsible For America’s Embarrassing Gerrymandering Mess
This article is part of TPM Cafe, the House of TPM for the opinion and the analysis of the news. It was initially published on Balls and Strikes.
At the request of President Donald Trump, the Texas Republicans are making their state even more mocked by the concept of representative democracy than it was already. In an attempt to preserve the narrow majority of the GOP in the midst of 2026, legislators tinker with the limits of the 38 districts of the State Congress to create five other safe republican seats, forcing several democrats to request a re -election next year in districts which are suddenly, alarming. The scrambling of the card in this way would guarantee that in a state in which Trump obtained 56% of the votes in 2024, the Republicans would lock 80% of the representation of the State at the Congress during the rest of the decade.
In response, California Governor Gavin Newsom asked the legislators to her State to create a new map that would bring out five additional security seats until 2030. Ambitious elected officials elsewhere explore similar reprisals, eager to make the national electoral landscape. In Texas, the Republicans have become so desperate to maintain the quorum necessary to go before they had a handful of democrats physically confined to the room of day – generally a sign that democracy is “in the right place”.
As is the case so often in American politics, you can draw a straight line between this fellow Hemmainmandering and a stupid Handicraft of the United States Supreme Court. In a decision of 5-4 Rucho c. Common cause In 2019, the five Republican judges judged that judicial disputes to the Gerrymanders supporters could not go ahead before the federal courts because such cases present a “political question” – in large part, a question that judges (ostensibly) cannot answer the use of legal principles. Writing for the majority, the chief judge John Roberts explained that the Constitution gives no feasible standard to determine when a given Gerrymander goes too far to be legal. Quoting the line Marbury c. Madison About the Court’s obligation to “say what is the law” – is always a good sign that conservative justice is about to connect – Roberts concluded that this time, the duty of the Court is to say: “It is not the law”. »(Do you see what he did there?)
It is of course true that the Supreme Court did not invent the partisan gerrymandering, not to mention the governor of Texas Greg Abbott to a fascism managed by speed by emitting civil arrest mandates for the Democratic legislators who had the temerity to oppose his Gambit of redness. But the court is responsible for his choice to link his own hands six years ago, allowing these legislators to cement himself in power without fear of interference from the annoying and industrial tribunals.
In what is, in my opinion, still one of the most embarrassing paragraphs to appear in the pages of the journalist in the United States, Roberts rings Rocker by noting that detention only limits the federal courts; Congress, he says, would remain free to promulgate anti-alternation legislation, as well as legislators at the level of the state. The argument here is that the dissatisfied voters of corruption in the political process do not really need the help of John Roberts, as they can always request the repair of their grievances via the above -mentioned corrupt political process. This is almost analogous to the firefighters service that stops in a fire house, endearing the pipes on fire terminals, then politely informing the owner that he could rain at a minute.
The premise of Roberts is, to say it generously, doubtful: as Steve Vladeck points out, there are The standards that the court could have decided to prescribe for use in the affairs of the supporter Gerrymandering, if it were so inclined. The problem, of course, is that the conservative judges do not care about the partisan gerrymandering because they include the fundamental facts on the functioning of the policy in this country: at the national level, the Republicans control 59 of the 99 legislative chambers of state, and hold both the legislative assembly and the governor in 24 states, against 15 democrats. In other words, the Republicans have more power on the line drawing process in more places than their democratic counterparts, who always rush to make up for each other.
As Newsom has demonstrated, Democrats are as capable as card republicans who ruthlessly draw their adversaries. But the Roberts bet made Rocker It is that, on the whole, the existence of an uncontrolled partisan gerrymandering is better for his republican colleagues than the absence of uncontrolled partisan gerrymandering. The appeal to the supposed difficulties of the development of “politically neutral” standards to solve problems is a secular maneuver among the judges who seek to wash their hands of problems that they do not want to solve. At one point, Roberts carefully notes that majority judges do not “tolerate” the partisan gerrymandering, but if they did, I do not know how they would have decided to make the case differently.
What is happening in Texas and California and elsewhere at the moment shows how reasoning Rocker always. You do not need to have a law diploma to understand that a Texas card which transforms an advantage of 56-42 into an eruption of 79-21 is not, in a significant, fair sense. You do not need to be a judge of the Supreme Court to understand that a card of California which would transform the voting share of 58% of Kamala Harris in 2024 in 94% of the power in the House does not allow an equal participation in the political process.
But it’s the price that Rocker Forcing millions of voters to pay: Roberts has borrowed the language of judicial humility, warning of the potential dangers of the rider of federal courts to answer hypothetical questions that could be difficult. All he did is prevent the federal courts from answering very real questions that are not.
