{"id":10859,"date":"2018-02-19T22:33:43","date_gmt":"2018-02-20T03:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/?p=10859"},"modified":"2018-03-08T15:52:32","modified_gmt":"2018-03-08T20:52:32","slug":"how-pennsylvanias-redistricting-effort-may-succeed-where-other-states-havent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/how-pennsylvanias-redistricting-effort-may-succeed-where-other-states-havent\/","title":{"rendered":"How Pennsylvania’s Redistricting Effort May Succeed Where Other States Haven’t"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pennsylvania\u2019s current congressional map was found unconstitutional by its state supreme court<\/a> on January 22, and the Republican-led legislature\u2019s subsequent failures to secure a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court or settle on a new map with Gov. Tom Wolf could strike a decisive blow to state political parties that maintain power through partisan gerrymandering. The legislature missed their court-imposed deadline<\/a> for gaining the Governor\u2019s approval on February 15, leaving the job of drawing Pennsylvania\u2019s new congressional districts to Stanford Law professor Nathaniel Persily. This decision seems to threaten Republicans in Pennsylvania\u2019s General Assembly, with some representatives even publicly discussing a vote<\/a> to impeach the state Supreme Court judges that ruled against their map. Such an extreme response is probably informed by Persily\u2019s lauded experience<\/a> as a fair court-appointed expert in redistricting cases from New York to Georgia, with his recent experience drawing North Carolina\u2019s legislative map being most illustrative.<\/span><\/p>\n

The maps that Persily drew on behalf of the court in <\/span>North Carolina v. Covington<\/span><\/i> were the result of a suit brought by residents<\/a> who saw the black vote being diluted in over two dozen districts. Their vote-share had been diminished by a map that spread black communities thinly amongst many electorates. After a district court panel sided with the residents, the Supreme Court affirmed the lower court\u2019s demand<\/a> for 28 new legislative districts. The district judges then appointed Persily to give the districts less racially suppressive boundaries, but the Supreme Court has made clear that this method has its limits.<\/span><\/p>\n

On January 18, the Supreme Court stayed<\/a> a concurrently-running case\u2019s decision in the Middle District of North Carolina that called for congressional redistricting on the grounds that partisan bias in drawing district lines violates the 14th Amendment. In staying this case, the Supreme Court appears to call for a pause on partisan gerrymandering at the federal level until it decides its constitutionality later this year, but the nearly decade-long fight to define state legislature maps in North Carolina remains active on the issue of race-based redistricting. <\/span><\/p>\n

In <\/span>Covington<\/span><\/i>, Persily\u2019s newly-drawn districts were intended to address this racial bias in North Carolina\u2019s old maps, gaining the district court\u2019s approval for his map on January 19th<\/a>. But on February 6th a very brief order from the Supreme Court modified the lower court\u2019s decision<\/a>, allowing many of Persily\u2019s changes to take effect while halting redistricting in Wake and Mecklenburg (which happen to be the state\u2019s most populous counties).<\/span><\/p>\n

Considering these restrictions on Persily\u2019s anti-gerrymandering efforts and the Supreme Court\u2019s suspension of partisan congressional gerrymandering decisions until it rules on the constitutional issue, Pennsylvania\u2019s focus on the unsettled issue of partisan gerrymandering seems at risk. But what\u2019s happening in Pennsylvania is different in one key way\u2014 the process doesn\u2019t step on the Supreme Court\u2019s toes.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court\u2019s decision rests on a state constitutional requirement that \u201celections shall be free and equal<\/a>,\u201d which the court reads as being incompatible with a partisan advantage that gives 13 of the state\u2019s 18 Congressional seats to a party that barely half of the electorate voted for<\/a>. While similar to North Carolina\u2019s suspended decision in principle, the lack of federal law claims likely helped the Pennsylvania court retain its authority by confining the case to questions of <\/span>Pennsylvania law<\/span><\/i>. If true, the deference that the Supreme Court traditionally shows to state supreme courts in matters of state law could easily explain Justice Alito denying to stay the decision (without reasons) on February 5th<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Much like in North Carolina, these positive procedural conditions fell into place when Republican legislators attempted to maintain their majority by refusing input from the Governor or Democrats in the general assembly, providing insight into how legal reform efforts can have inconsistent results based on seemingly minute details. As was the case here, the same actors can tackle the same problem with the same basic principles in mind, but still end up with fundamentally different results because of a tangential factor like the Supreme Court\u2019s current docket\u2014 with vastly different versions of representation being the ultimate consequence.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pennsylvania\u2019s current congressional map was found unconstitutional by its state supreme court on January 22, and the Republican-led legislature\u2019s subsequent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":174,"featured_media":10860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1219,44,775,42],"tags":[392,1390,450,532,1227,877,1240],"coauthors":[1385],"class_list":["post-10859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-amicus","category-congress","category-courts","category-racial-justice","category-voting-and-elections-rights","tag-north-carolina","tag-pennsylvania","tag-redistricting","tag-supreme-court","tag-voter-suppression","tag-voting-discrimination","tag-voting-rights"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/80\/2018\/02\/redistrict-rallyjpeg-ddf2bc6473eead33-909e297c427b8ea8.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZrWS-2P9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/174"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10859"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}