{"id":12575,"date":"2018-04-05T15:33:54","date_gmt":"2018-04-05T19:33:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/articles\/gerrymander-gazette-april-2018\/"},"modified":"2018-04-05T15:33:54","modified_gmt":"2018-04-05T19:33:54","slug":"gerrymander-gazette-april-2018","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/es\/articles\/gerrymander-gazette-april-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Gerrymander Gazette | April 2018"},"template":"","class_list":["post-12575","article","type-article","status-publish","hentry","article_type-blog-post"],"acf":{"details":{"summary":" The fight for redistricting reform is progressing in the courts, at the grassroots, and in the halls of government across America.","featured_image":null,"article_type":1103,"authors":null,"related_issues":[103,2066],"related_work":false,"location":null},"sidebar":{"helper_enable_sidebar":false,"helper_media_contact":{"heading":"Media Contact","manually_enter_person":false,"person":null,"name":"","role":"","phone":"","email":""},"helper_links_downloads":{"heading":"Links & Downloads","links":null}},"page_layout":[{"acf_fc_layout":"layout_wysiwyg","_acfe_flexible_toggle":null,"component_wysiwyg":{"content":"
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As usual, redistricting reform efforts continue in the courts, at the grassroots, and in the halls of government. Many thanks to senior census correspondent (Common Cause program associate) Keshia Morris for her contribution on the census citizenship question. Let\u2019s dive in.<\/div>\r\n
\r\nBenisek v. Lamone: Boy, Does Chief Justice Roberts Hate Hobby Farms<\/strong>\r\nLast week the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in\u00a0Benisek v. Lamone<\/em>, a First Amendment challenge to Maryland Democrats\u2019 partisan gerrymander of the state\u2019s Sixth Congressional District that could have national consequences.\u00a0Listen to a discussion of the case featuring Michael Kimberly, the attorney who argued it.<\/a>\u00a0Some of the justices indicated that evidence of partisan intent and success in flipping the district to Democratic control was clear and unequivocal. Justice Kagan summarized the situation in Maryland: \u201cfrom the Governor [Martin O\u2019Malley], from Congressman [Steny] Hoyer, people were very upfront about what they were trying to do here, which was to create another Democratic district. And they did that.\u201d Kagan also dismissed Maryland solicitor general Steven Sullivan\u2019s argument that the Cook Report rates this district as competitive by citing that the Democratic candidate has won in three straight elections, including 2014, a year so good for Republicans that Roy Moore could have been elected public defender of San Francisco.\r\n\r\nChief Justice Roberts noted that the addition to the district of heavily Democratic suburbs of Washington such as the city of Potomac \u201cdoesn\u2019t seem to have any internal logic.\u201d Roberts then threw some shade at \u201chobby farms\u201d to make the point: \u201cI mean, part of the issue here is you have people from, you know, Potomac joined with people from the far west panhandle. I mean, they both have farms but the former, hobby farms. And the -- any others -- the others are real farms.\u201d Burn!\r\n\r\nIn one curious moment, Justice Breyer suggested reargument of a mega-case that includes\u00a0Gill v. Whitford<\/em>, this Maryland case, and the consolidated North Carolina case of\u00a0Common Cause v. Rucho<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0League of Women Voters of North Carolina v. Rucho<\/em>. \u201cWhat would you think of taking the three cases and setting them for reargument on the question of standard and there we'd have all three variations in front of us and we would enable people who have an interest in this subject generally to file briefs, and we\u2019d see them all together and they could attack each other\u2019s standards or they could support each other\u2019s standards or they could attack any standard?\u201d With future Supreme Court Justice [the last guy Donald Trump saw yelling on Fox & Friends] potentially joining the bench, it is unclear what the consequences of putting off the decision yet again might mean. If a reargument does not happen, we expect decisions in\u00a0Gill v. Whitford<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Benisek v. Lamone<\/em>\u00a0by the end of June.\r\n\r\nDo You Believe in Miracles? Ohio Democrats and Republicans Agree on Redistricting Reform<\/strong>\r\nThe\u00a0Ohio Republican Party joined<\/a>\u00a0the Ohio Democratic Party in endorsing\u00a0Issue 1<\/a>, a referendum on the\u00a0May 8<\/span><\/span>\u00a0ballot that would implement protections against one-party dominance of the congressional redistricting process. Legislators of both parties forged a compromise and put the measure on the ballot after the\u00a0Fair Districts Ohio<\/a>\u00a0coalition exerted some friendly encouragement by collecting more than 200,000 signatures for a\u00a0separate initiative<\/a>. The coalition has focused much of its energy on passage of Issue 1, but will\u00a0continue collecting signatures<\/a>\u00a0for the November Fair Districts proposal in case the May referendum fails.\r\n\r\nCensus Citizenship Question: The Trump Administration Finds Religion on Voting Rights? Nope\u00a0<\/strong>\r\nIn December \u201817, President Trump\u2019s Department of Justice wrote a\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0to the Census Bureau requesting the addition of a citizenship question on the census survey. The stated reason for this might surprise you. They say it would help the administration fully enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. This is a curious position for a Department of Justice led by a man who called the Supreme Court\u2019s gutting of the Voting Rights Act\u00a0\u201cgood news\u201d for the South<\/a>\u00a0and an administration that\u00a0advocated for the placement of Secret Service agents at the polls<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0falsely claimed that millions voted illegally in 2016<\/a>. Since that December request, the Census Bureau provided evidence of disparate response rates from minority and immigrant communities to the citizenship question, but the Commerce Department\u00a0decided<\/a>\u00a0that the evidence was inconclusive. Dismissing\u00a0concerns raised by senior officials from the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations<\/a>, Secretary Ross decided to upend 50 years of Census Bureau best practices.\r\n\r\nThe\u00a0NAACP<\/a>,\u00a0California<\/a>,\u00a0New York along with 16 other states and six cities<\/a>\u00a0have all filed lawsuits alleging that the 2020 Census will massively undercount people of color. California was the first out of the gate after Secretary Ross\u2019 announcement, stating the addition of a citizenship question is not just a bad idea - it\u2019s illegal. New York then followed with\u00a0a multi-state lawsuit. Both lawsuits are alleging similar claims: that the citizenship question interferes with the \u201cactual Enumeration\u201d clause of the Constitution and that the decision to add a question about citizenship violates the Administrative Procedures Act which prohibits federal agency action that is \u201carbitrary [and] capricious.\u201d The NAACP\u2019s lawsuit is also asserting that the 2020 Census will undercount African Americans and people of color, but does not name the citizenship question specifically.\r\n\r\nRocky Mountain Compromise: Backers of Separate Redistricting Reform Measures to Jointly Support New Proposals<\/strong>\r\nAfter months of negotiations, People Not Politicians and Fair Districts Colorado jointly drafted ballot initiatives to reform how congressional and state legislative districts are drawn in Colorado following each census. Read the\u00a0initiative for congressional districts<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0initiative for state legislative districts<\/a>. Each organization originally drafted separate measures for each type of district, but attempted to consolidate their proposals into just one measure for congressional districts and one measure for legislative districts to avoid conflicting initiatives on the November ballot. The joint proposals would create one 12-person independent redistricting commission for congressional districts and a separate 12-person commission for state legislative districts. Each commission will have four Democrats, four Republicans, and four individuals who are not affiliated with either major party. Applicants will be screened for conflicts of interest and will be required to draw districts using neutral criteria that make political manipulation of the process very difficult. The measures will be up for review and comment today, and then will have to be filed with Title Board by\u00a0Friday<\/span><\/span>. \u00a0The Title Board hearing will take place on\u00a0April 18<\/span><\/span>.<\/div>\r\n
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