WHAT THE F**K! I knew WisGOPs were desperately trying to get the GOP-leaning Supreme Court to rig our maps even more than they already are, but I really didn't think they'd buy it. So, what was the justification for SCOTUS to shoot down the legislative map through the shadow docket (aka - NOT HEARING FORMAL ARGUMENTS)?This is an absolutely shocking decision. The maps were adopted by a Republican justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. This appeal was considered a Hail Mary, and it prevailed. I am stunned by this ruling. https://t.co/i5r4D0eqcj
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) March 23, 2022
Or as I put it...The Court using the shadow docket to imply that the 14th Amendment and VRA require Wisconsin to have more gerrymandered electoral maps that give less representation to Black voters is incredible stuff even by Roberts Court standards https://t.co/kBYPVqk1fn
— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) March 23, 2022
Yes, if you read the unsigned opinion, the "Justices" claimed that there were too many districts in Gov Evers' map that had a majority of Black voters (I'm going to cut out a lpot of the footnotes and give the basic "reasoning".Because if there’s one group of underrepresented people in Wisconsin, it’s WHITE PEOPLE, right Scott?
— JakeEdwards (@JakeMadtown) March 23, 2022
Seriously, that’s what the WILL “charity” claimed, and the @FedSoc justices agreed with. #TaxTheBradleys #gerrymandering #wiunion #wipolitics
It is not clear whether the court viewed the Governor or itself as the state mapmaker who must satisfy strict scrutiny, but the court’s application of Cooper was flawed either way. If the former, the Governor failed to carry his burden. His main explanation for drawing the seventh majority black district was that there is now a sufficiently large and compact population of black residents to fill it..apparently embracing just the sort of uncritical majority-minority district maximization that we have expressly rejected....He provided almost no other evidence or analysis supporting his claim that the VRA required the seven majority-black districts that he drew. Strict scrutiny requires much more. “[W]here we have accepted a State’s ‘good reasons’ for using race in drawing district lines, the State made a strong showing of a pre-enactment analysis with justifiable conclusions”). If the Wisconsin Supreme Court was reviewing whether the Governor satisfied strict scrutiny, it erred by adopting his maps. If, on the other hand, the court sought to shoulder strict scrutiny’s burden itself, it fared little better. First, it misunderstood Cooper’s inquiry. The court believed that it had to conclude only that the VRA might support race-based districting—not that the statute required it. (“[W]e cannot say for certain on this record that seven majority-Black assembly districts are required by the VRA,” but “we see good reasons to conclude a seventh majority-Black assembly district may be required” (emphasis added)). Our precedent instructs otherwise. Thus in Cooper we explained, for example, that “race-based districting is narrowly tailored . . . if a State had ‘good reasons’ for thinking that the Act demanded such steps.” (emphasis added). And we concluded that “experience gave the State no reason to think that the VRA required” it to move voters based on race. (emphasis added). That principle grew out of the more general proposition that “the institution that makes the racial distinction must have had a ‘strong basis in evidence’ to conclude that remedial action was necessary, ‘before it embarks on an affirmative-action program.’” (some emphasis added). To be sure, we said in Cooper that States have “‘breathing room’” to make reasonable mistakes; we will not fault a State just because its “compliance measures . . . may prove, in perfect hindsight, not to have been needed.” But that “leeway” does not allow a State to adopt a racial gerrymander that the State does not, at the time of imposition, “judg[e] necessary under a proper interpretation of the VRA.”"Racial gerrymander"?? That's ridiculous on its face, especially given that the population of Wisconsin is 6.7% Black (making 7 seats the closest number to accurate representation) and less than 81% White (while 90 of 99 Assembly districts would have White majorities in Evers' map). (Side note: If there's a group with right to complain, it is Hispanic Wisconsinites, who are 7% of the population with only 2 Assembly seats (at best) that could have Hispanics as the group with the highest number of voters. But it's harder to draw Hispanic-majority seats because people with that ethnicity are dispersed more uniformly around the state). This also makes the reasoning for SCOTUS accepting Evers' Congressional map obvious.
(I'd say "sorry" to Bryan Steil, but screw that race-baiting Coffee Boy). So the SCOTUS "justices" sent the Legislative maps back to the Wisconsin Supreme Court for more consideration, to get rid of the "racial gerrymandering".Because white people don’t lose seats under the Congress map.
— JakeEdwards (@JakeMadtown) March 23, 2022
...On remand, the court is free to take additional evidence if it prefers to reconsider the Governor’s maps rather than choose from among the other submissions. Any new analysis, however, must comply with our equal protection jurisprudence.In theory, Evers' maps might stand up, given that the the Wisconsin Supreme Court claimed it would decide the maps based on having the least changes from 2010s gerrymander (this was the main reason Justice Hagedorn gave for picking Evers' maps in the first place). It's BS to not at least consider racial equity, especially in a state that has some of the worst Black-White disparities in America, but if that's the way the FedSoc scum on SCOTUS wants to play, then fine. But if a 7th Black Assembly seat is off the table, why don't they just pick my Assembly map? I've overlaid my 2020s map with the 2010s map and you won't see that much shading of different districts.
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