Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Howard Fischer reports on Wednesday's hearing before a three judge panel of federal judges. GOP attorney to judicial panel: Redistricting maps are illegal:
David Cantelme told the three-judge panel the
Independent Redistricting Commission broke the law when it created
districts with varying populations despite state and federal laws
generally requiring all voting districts to have approximately the same
number of people. The commission's maps have a difference of more than 8
percent between the most and least-populated districts.
This is a losing argument. Apparently neither Howard Fischer nor David Cantelme are aware that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on September 25, 2012 in a West Virginia Redistricting case — by an apparent unanimous vote — that lower-court judges not insist
on close-to-zero differences in the population of each of a state’s
districts for choosing members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Lyle Denniston wrote at SCOTUSblog.com, Opinion recap: Hedging on “one person, one vote”:
“Zero variance” in population is not the new constitutional norm for
redistricting, the Court made clear. Just because computers can
produce almost exactly equal-sized districts, the Constitution does not
require it, the decision said.
After sitting on the case from West Virginia all summer long, the
Court produced an eight-page, unsigned ruling that largely deferred to
the wishes of that state’s legislature on how to craft the three
districts for choosing its House delegation. The opinion can be found here. The new ruling came in the case of Tennant v. Jefferson County Commission (docket 11-1184).
* * *
Tuesday’s ruling gave state legislators constitutional permission to
have some variation in size between congressional districts, if the
lawmakers do so to protect incumbents from having to run against each
other, to avoid splitting up counties, and to avoid moving many people
into a new district from the one where they had previously cast their
votes. In what appeared to be a novel new declaration, the Court
stressed that lower courts should not demand that a state prove
specifically how each of those goals would be satisfied by moving away
from equally populated districts. And, in another legal innovation,
the Court said that a variation that is not really very big does not
become a constitutionally suspect one just because a sophisticated
computer program could be used to avoid nearly all such variations.
If the difference between a state’s largest House district and its
smallest one is small — such as the 0.79% deviation in the West Virginia
plan — that does not become unconstitutionally large just because it
could be avoided by “technological advances in redistricting and mapping
software.”
* * *
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court said once again that state legislatures
can have some inequality in the population of districts, if that is
done, within reason, to serve the other goals that redistricting can be
arranged to meet. The Court said explicitly that the Constitution does
not guarantee absolute equality in population of districts, even if
that could be achieved by high-tech computers. It also cautioned judges
around the country not to go too far to second-guess how legislatures
work out the various and competing interests that they confront in
redistricting.
What else have you got, Howard?