Or add an amendment to the commission that says if that the Texas and Florida maps have less than a certain percentage of Dem performing districts (say 40%), then the Dem legislature gets to draw a map in response.
I don't think the appetite will be there for at least a year. Maybe late next year if republican states are blatant enough and generate enough headlines.
If they want a good-government version of this they could tie whether the use of the commission to whether or not there is a similar body in Texas and Florida.
I think the idea of voters being able to vote on maps seems very popular. I say have an amendment that gives the legislature the option to draw maps that can only be approved by voters. The commission can stay but the voter approved maps can override the commission at any time.
On the contrary, Barney Frank is referring to the far left, not the left as in liberals and progressives of all stripes. He’s not even talking about Zohran Mamdani.
He’s referring to Defunding the Police and other crap Democrats have had to address only to find they’ve lost elections as a result.
No, but regardless of what he's done after his time in Congress, I'll continue to credit him for being a loud, eloquent advocate for the Democratic Party and civil liberties while he was in office.
No, Barney Frank is referring to the far left, not the left.
He’s criticizing the more fringe and crazy ideas that have been rejected by voters locally in cities like San Francisco and elsewhere in support of sanity. Otherwise, Frank is Team Blue all the way.
I don't think WI Republicans are going to run a conservative candidate next year. They'll probably target the court after 2028 and bank on R anger at the next Democratic president.
I agree but I am one of the dieing breed of voters who highly value experience (especially in the judiciary) so I think a judge from the court of appeals is generally better than a circuit judge.
Thank you for the link to the CBC. After reading the article, I went on to listen to the full Address to Joint Session of Congress by King Charles. I loved how he basically said that Trumpian Republican and Isolationism approaches to governing policies were all wrong. Since, yesterday I spent trying to get caught up on my housework and missed any coverage by our news, this complete Address this morning was music to my ears! Again, thank you for the link!
Opinion Diagnostics (a GOP-leaning outlet) has Roy Cooper leading by 50.4% to Michael Whatley's 41.4%. They surveyed 830 NC voters from April 21st-24th, with a margin error of 3.5 percentage points.
If the GOP polling has Cooper leading Whatley by almost 10 points and it holds through the summer, it's going to be a blowout for Republicans across the board.
No chance he winds up anywhere near that number so the real question is where do those voters go? Plenty of possible scenarios: 1) those are protest votes against Republican rule and they go to Talarico or stay home, 2) those are conservative voters who ultimately come home to the Republican or 3) a combo of the above.
This poll asked a ton of questions before the head to head numbers. That is not a good practice in political polling. I wouldn't put much stock in the senate numbers.
The 2nd Black-majority district as drawn is struck down. Section 2 of the VRA remains. It's an erosion, but not what some were fearing. They made it harder to challenge maps under Gingles, but still allow private action.
Because it wasn't required, there isn't a compelling reason to use "race" to create a majority-minority district. Kind of circular reasoning. Of course, one person's race is another person's partisanship.
Does it actually do anything, according to the Supreme Court, or is it effectively a dead letter, as it seems from this decision (having not seen the purported reasoning)?
They made it harder to challenge stuff under Gingles, but as I recall that was one of the "good" outcome scenarios for this case. Also, they didn't strike private action I believe.
Didn't the Supreme Court previously rule that a Republican Party, I think in North Carolina, where they admitted they were intentionally racially gerrymandering, couldn't be found in violation because purely partisan gerrymandering would have produced the same result?
Question: with the decision now out, what, if any, recourse do we have? Is there anything we could do to negate the GOP’s inevitable gutting of every Dem district in the South?
Not every district. As mentioned above, some seats are clearly compact, like in Mississippi. In Georgia, it would surely be a dummymander to dismantle more than 1 or 2 seats. Florida, of course, is ongoing.
It's not inevitable every district in the south will be gutted. Some will be kept as vote sinks and others may stay due to political considerations (local pushback, dummymander fears, internal GOP opposition) rather than legal ones.
All told, a very not bad result for Dems considering where things could've gone. The decision will protect nearly all existing VRA districts. What it targeted were seats like AL and LA with "you have to create a district if you can" scenarios. DeSantis's new map is actually illegal under the new standard.
Yes a Democratic Governor could (and certainly would) veto any redistricting bills, assuming the Republicans do not have supermajorities in both houses which is virtually impossible).
MI-Sen: CNN is reporting that Mallory McMorrow deleted tweets where, among other things, she referenced having voted in California despite being a Michigan resident (McMorrow never ran for public office until 2018):
This is from the same CNN reporter who got Trump elected in 2024 with the transgender prison inmate story against Kamala Harris, and, not surprisingly, most of it is a nothingburger except for where she may have committed election fraud.
It's close to the top. Her polling started dipping right after the "she's for they/them" ad. Made it seem like she cared more about fringe Dem issues rather that the economy. Not the only reason she lost of course, but all the anti-Kamala arguments seemed to solidify with that ad. Internal polling bore it out.
Part of it is because Harris didn't aggressively support transgender rights during her campaign, which might have helped. She basically ran away from transgender rights-related issues altogether after the CNN report against her.
I find it far more damning that she voted to push for tax breaks to lure data centers to Michigan in late 2024. Rather disappointing, but it seems all of the senate candidates in Michigan are willing to tolerate the tech companies to some degree.
On Callais, I know Republicans probably could easily draw out a few more seats in much of the south, but would they really risk doing that in places like Georgia, where Democrats look primed to have a banner year, or Texas where they already might have overextended themselves?
They can probably draw out Sanford Bishop, but maybe they’d be deterred from doing so if Miracle Rankin and Jen Jordan win the GASC races in a couple weeks. If they do, we can flip the court in 2028. I can’t imagine they would want to unpack Atlanta any further.
As for Texas, that map seems like it was built in a house of cards of temporary good hispanic numbers for Republicans. If the Talarico +30 numbers with hispanic polls are accurate, that map is going to crumble.
No way Kemp would stand in the way of redistricting. He did the right thing in 2020 because he viewed it a constitutional imperative. I see no such indication he'd feel that way about this topic. We need to win GA-Gov this year....
I agree, but I could also name a number of instances where Republicans have competitive primaries and Democrats have a clear frontrunner. GA-Sen, MI-Gov, IA-Gov, TX-Sen (post-March)
I think the crisis on the CA Gov race has past. In a weird way, Sewell being a sexual predator turned out to have possibly saved us from disaster. (And as a side note can you imagine what would have happened if Sewell ended up in the general and then all that came out!)
In a jungle primary, the top 2 survive. Assuming Democratic voters would rather not have a choice of 2 Republicans in the general election, they are wise to focus on 1 or 2 max to avoid elimination. Nobody else is making a choice for them. It's just rational strategy.
Minersville v. Gobitis (which was overturned only three years later) was another pre-Roberts Court case that was among the worst SCOTUS has ever issued.
The more notable cases of Engel v. Vitale and Tinker v. Des Moines also ruled heavily in the opposite direction. On discussion of the worst courts, I will say Warren is probably the best.
They won't be remembered alongside those because they are disguised in arcane voting law, and don't provoke the same emotional reaction from random folks as those travesties. Republicans have until very recently mastered the art of passing laws that enable them to wield extraordinary power that voters could not give a shit about (i.e. anything to do with voting, drawing lines, etc.). Dems are only just started to awaken to this w/r/t redistricting.
Yes, Dred Scott is the worst single Supreme Court decision in U.S. history. But out of the top 25 worst SCOTUS decisions, this Court has about 20 of them.
This case, Citizens United v. FEC, Dobbs v. Jackson, Shelby v. Holder (like you said) and McDonald v. Chicago are probably the 5 worst of the Roberts court.
Writing for the Supreme Court’s majority today, Justice Alito wrote that the justices were updating the 40-year-old framework that courts look to for evaluating the use of race in drawing up congressional districts, essentially saying that lawmakers only violate the law if they intentionally use race to draw district maps to limit the power of minority voters.
For decades, lawmakers have crafted congressional districts with a focus on ensuring that minority voters had the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice, often aiming to create majority-minority districts as they labored under scrutiny from federal courts that guaranteed the rights of minorities because of the Voting Rights Act.
But Justice Alito wrote that to successfully challenge district maps under the Voting Rights Act now, challengers will need to show proof a state “intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.”
I mean, if there was a way for SCOTUS to galvanize public opinion against themselves and the Republicans right before a midterm, they just had to take it. Dobbs clearly worked well for them now that so many states now have reproductive rights in their constitutions now, so why not do this in an unpopular environment?
I mean, if this ensures a blue tsunami and we flip the Senate, that'll be a good thing in the long run. If we flip enough Senate seats (and not just FL and OH), we'll have enough Senators locked in for six years (provided that Dems win the presidency in 2028) to really fix the damage SCOTUS and TACO have done. And then oust MAGA idiots like Budd and Johnson in 2028 to pad the Senate majority.
Some of the discussion up thread was viewing this as decently better than the worst case scenario.
I'm not seeing it. This is pretty much a complete gutting of VRA districts. It's in line with the bribery ruling, that it's only a bribe if they write "Bribe" on the check memo -- the limitations on illegality are so easy to bypass that they might as well not be there.
IMO this also adds a worry for a big plan we had for our next trifecta: nation wide bans on gerrymandering. The court has shown their hand and it's hard to imagine that they would avoid making a similar ruling about such a law. We need to operate under the assumption that the current court will stretch "constitutional" to the absurd in order to help republicans attain or hold power.
Roberts is a partisan hack and will happily abandon things he said decades ago if it favors his party. Even if, somehow, he decided to be consistent, it doesn't matter: there are 6 conservatives on SCOTUS.
Which then the court would strike down, or did he mean constitutional amendment for which he knows will never happen. These are republican hacks on the court.
I don't think this indicates that they would strike down a nationwide ban of partisan gerrymandering. As for section 2, I haven't had a chance to read the entire opinion, but it appears to go a long way to restoring the 1980 Bolden decision, which held that to establish a section 2 violation, the challengers must show a discriminatory purpose rather than a discriminatory effect, which Congress reversed when it reauthorized the Voting Rights Act in 1982. That's long been a goal of Roberts. But how many of the existing majority-minority districts might fall may depend on whether the courts conclude that they were created in response to dilution of minority voting power as opposed to creating a majority-minority district. The court did not overrule its Milligan decision of three years ago, so it's still good law.
I said this in a thread last week -- we need to pass simple, stand-alone, easy-for-the-population-to-understand bills to limit gerrymandering federally. It's the only way.. not some monstrosity voting bill that Republicans will pick apart because it had 23 things in it they didn't like surrounding 2 good ideas.
1 - Can only redistrict once per decade
2 - Districts must match partisanship/election results (or whatever metric)
3 - Can't be drawn to favor a person or party (and how that is determined)
Totally agree on #1. Disagree strongly on #2 - we don't need to create Senate 2.0 by forcing house seats to match state partisanship. #3 is a good idea, but seems pretty undefinable/unenforceable to me.
having read the opinion fully that is my takeaway, however portions of alito's logic are so tortured that I have difficulty understanding in what scenario a lawsuit challenging improper dilution of the black vote would ever be successful
How would that be accomplished? Forgive me for being naive, but wouldn’t that require a constitutional amendment? If all the seats are gerrymandered, how would we even get a majority for that?
Packing the court is a fantasy that requires a level of ruthlessness and hardball that Democrats are seemingly incapable of operating at, at a DNA level.
Schumer and Jeffries are going to be the bruisers to see this done? Lmao. Not with 20 AOCs in the Senate could we do this.
I’d agree with all but PA, WI, and maybe even MN. PA and WI would be incredibly risky in states that went for Trump two out of three times and where Republicans have a very good chance of getting trifectas in 2030 (I’d probably say they are favored there if a D is elected president in 2028). Better to put independent commissions on the ballot there as a backstop to future Republican gerrymandering of the House seats and legislatures.
In MN, we have had a trifecta for all of 4 of the last 36 years and the state senate is very difficult. Remember we came within 8000 votes of a GOP trifecta for the 2011 redistricting. It may be prudent to put independent redistricting on the ballot here, but not a no brainer the same way WI and PA are.
I think we could get +2 out of WA and we need to be eliminating ALL blue state commissions/non-partisan redistricting setups until we have national redistricting reform. That means, CO, NJ, WA, NY, CA - all of those laws need to go.
In some ways I'd say it's the worst outcome: it avoids the headline "VRA Overturned" while getting that as the effect of the outcome all the same.
The method of determination they have comes down to arbitrary rulings from the court, meaning we could very easily see uneven enforcement between red states and blue states.
There's always ways for things to get worse but nothing is really jumping to my mind here.
This sums up my feelings well, the new "test" seems to only block racial gerrymandering that serves no partisan purpose, which is rarely possible and pointless.
Well Louisiana's map was directly deemed unconstitutional. The others weren't.
Well, we know for sure Elon Musk’s picks for political candidates aren’t going to be in line with Trump’s.
Trump, please proceed to make sure Musk has no relevance in politics! /s
Surprised how far Cameron has slipped since his entry over a year ago. He could possibly place third with the top 2 being Trump and Musk backed.
That will probably just take moderate Republican/independent votes from Lynne Walz
Or add an amendment to the commission that says if that the Texas and Florida maps have less than a certain percentage of Dem performing districts (say 40%), then the Dem legislature gets to draw a map in response.
Heck I’d amend the NYS commission to do this too.
I don't think the appetite will be there for at least a year. Maybe late next year if republican states are blatant enough and generate enough headlines.
If they want a good-government version of this they could tie whether the use of the commission to whether or not there is a similar body in Texas and Florida.
I think the idea of voters being able to vote on maps seems very popular. I say have an amendment that gives the legislature the option to draw maps that can only be approved by voters. The commission can stay but the voter approved maps can override the commission at any time.
Still, Dodd-Frank is a good piece of legislation, and the CFPB was established with good causes.
Like many pieces of legislation, it was great on paper and flawed/didn't do enough in practice.
The lack of a modern Glass Steagall Act is a problem.
However, for what Dodd Frank has been able to do, it’s been a start.
I have a feeling I know where he's heading with this, but it's not something we can discuss.
On the contrary, Barney Frank is referring to the far left, not the left as in liberals and progressives of all stripes. He’s not even talking about Zohran Mamdani.
He’s referring to Defunding the Police and other crap Democrats have had to address only to find they’ve lost elections as a result.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/04/barney-frank-criticizes-far-left-as-he-enters-hospice-care-to-deal-with-congestive-heart-failure/
Instead of enjoying his final months with friends and family members, he has to burn bridges with his party. You're no saint, Barney.
No, but regardless of what he's done after his time in Congress, I'll continue to credit him for being a loud, eloquent advocate for the Democratic Party and civil liberties while he was in office.
And him coming out as gay at the height of the AIDS crisis is immeasurable.
Indeed!
No, Barney Frank is referring to the far left, not the left.
He’s criticizing the more fringe and crazy ideas that have been rejected by voters locally in cities like San Francisco and elsewhere in support of sanity. Otherwise, Frank is Team Blue all the way.
It’s weird that Colon is running for the SCOWI. Maybe he thinks he can bring a male progressive perspective to the court?
I don't think WI Republicans are going to run a conservative candidate next year. They'll probably target the court after 2028 and bank on R anger at the next Democratic president.
I think they have to run someone as there are some local elections on the ballot and they don't want a D-D race to drive turn-out
It’d be nice to have a liberal candidate from outside of Milwaukee or Dane for once. That’s why I prefer Brunette.
I agree but I am one of the dieing breed of voters who highly value experience (especially in the judiciary) so I think a judge from the court of appeals is generally better than a circuit judge.
Having justices whose most recent experience is closer to the ground level is pretty valuable as well.
Justice Elect Taylor endorses Colon - https://x.com/mattsmith_news/status/2049534173883359598?s=46
That's probably it then.
News from the North: Remember when Trump was going to strangle Canada economically and we didn't have anything the US needed?
Thanks Trump!
Higher oil prices set to give feds a 'windfall' in next budget | CBC News https://share.google/tiRPEC73m1z75scFb
Thank you for the link to the CBC. After reading the article, I went on to listen to the full Address to Joint Session of Congress by King Charles. I loved how he basically said that Trumpian Republican and Isolationism approaches to governing policies were all wrong. Since, yesterday I spent trying to get caught up on my housework and missed any coverage by our news, this complete Address this morning was music to my ears! Again, thank you for the link!
Opinion Diagnostics (a GOP-leaning outlet) has Roy Cooper leading by 50.4% to Michael Whatley's 41.4%. They surveyed 830 NC voters from April 21st-24th, with a margin error of 3.5 percentage points.
https://www.wral.com/news/nccapitol/cooper-leads-whatley-in-us-senate-race-new-nc-polls-april-2026/
If the GOP polling has Cooper leading Whatley by almost 10 points and it holds through the summer, it's going to be a blowout for Republicans across the board.
Biggest thing is Cooper is over 50%.
It's likely higher with D-leaning pollsters.
Consistently leading by more than narrow margins in the polls for many months is also benefitting Cooper, not just being at the 50+% mark.
Another TX Sen poll Talarico up https://x.com/PpollingNumbers/status/2049474634957893944?s=20
Tough to get excited with undecideds so high. When Talarico is clearing at least 48% that's another story.
It looks like the Libertarian candidate is polling up to 7 in both scenarios as well.
Which is enough for a GOP candidate to win by a plurality.
Could be enough for a Dem to win with a plurality Beto did hit 48.3% in 2018.
No chance he winds up anywhere near that number so the real question is where do those voters go? Plenty of possible scenarios: 1) those are protest votes against Republican rule and they go to Talarico or stay home, 2) those are conservative voters who ultimately come home to the Republican or 3) a combo of the above.
This poll asked a ton of questions before the head to head numbers. That is not a good practice in political polling. I wouldn't put much stock in the senate numbers.
Emerson generic Ds by 10. https://x.com/PpollingNumbers/status/2049438477582737768?s=20
Please let this be an indication of Dem blowout in November.
*crosses fingers*
Great! Guess we're actually leading by 20.
Callais is out https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-109_21o3.pdf
The 2nd Black-majority district as drawn is struck down. Section 2 of the VRA remains. It's an erosion, but not what some were fearing. They made it harder to challenge maps under Gingles, but still allow private action.
Because it wasn't required, there isn't a compelling reason to use "race" to create a majority-minority district. Kind of circular reasoning. Of course, one person's race is another person's partisanship.
Does it actually do anything, according to the Supreme Court, or is it effectively a dead letter, as it seems from this decision (having not seen the purported reasoning)?
No, the VRA is not struck down here, just the Louisiana district.
MS-02 isn’t particularly gerrymandered.
Filing deadline passed in Mississippi months ago.
As did the primary. Which relates to my question above about Louisiana
They made it harder to challenge stuff under Gingles, but as I recall that was one of the "good" outcome scenarios for this case. Also, they didn't strike private action I believe.
I don't think that was at issue.
I misremembered I guess.
Since Louisiana's filing deadline has passed, a redraw won't come until 2028, no?
I believe so yes
I can't tell. Altio's opinion is endless, but I haven't seen a reference to Purcell.
That wasn't my question. Does the VRA actually have any force anymore?
Yes. "As properly understood," to quote Alito.
Didn't the Supreme Court previously rule that a Republican Party, I think in North Carolina, where they admitted they were intentionally racially gerrymandering, couldn't be found in violation because purely partisan gerrymandering would have produced the same result?
I believe this was more or less Paleo’s prediction (they’re usually not bad at divining court stuff) along with a number of pundits
Question: with the decision now out, what, if any, recourse do we have? Is there anything we could do to negate the GOP’s inevitable gutting of every Dem district in the South?
Not every district. As mentioned above, some seats are clearly compact, like in Mississippi. In Georgia, it would surely be a dummymander to dismantle more than 1 or 2 seats. Florida, of course, is ongoing.
It's not inevitable every district in the south will be gutted. Some will be kept as vote sinks and others may stay due to political considerations (local pushback, dummymander fears, internal GOP opposition) rather than legal ones.
All told, a very not bad result for Dems considering where things could've gone. The decision will protect nearly all existing VRA districts. What it targeted were seats like AL and LA with "you have to create a district if you can" scenarios. DeSantis's new map is actually illegal under the new standard.
This is the correct read. In practice, I'm sure some GOP governors will try to stretch it. Screws DeSantis a bit.
question: can't we mitigate any damage this would have in georgia if we win governor's race as polls indicate we will
Yes a Democratic Governor could (and certainly would) veto any redistricting bills, assuming the Republicans do not have supermajorities in both houses which is virtually impossible).
MI-Sen: CNN is reporting that Mallory McMorrow deleted tweets where, among other things, she referenced having voted in California despite being a Michigan resident (McMorrow never ran for public office until 2018):
https://www.instagram.com/p/DXtui-iiqOc/
This is from the same CNN reporter who got Trump elected in 2024 with the transgender prison inmate story against Kamala Harris, and, not surprisingly, most of it is a nothingburger except for where she may have committed election fraud.
Absolutely. Harris lost due to a wide array of factors, and that isn't close to being at the top of the list.
After all, "it's the economy, stupid!"
Or at least the quite manageable 4-5% you saw in 2021 coming out of peak Covid rather than the post Ukraine 9% peak in late 2022
It's close to the top. Her polling started dipping right after the "she's for they/them" ad. Made it seem like she cared more about fringe Dem issues rather that the economy. Not the only reason she lost of course, but all the anti-Kamala arguments seemed to solidify with that ad. Internal polling bore it out.
Part of it is because Harris didn't aggressively support transgender rights during her campaign, which might have helped. She basically ran away from transgender rights-related issues altogether after the CNN report against her.
Is your argument that a full-throated defense of transgender rights would have helped Harris in 2024?
Yes.
it's not just a bit much, it's straight up gross transphobia to spread that nonsense
I find it far more damning that she voted to push for tax breaks to lure data centers to Michigan in late 2024. Rather disappointing, but it seems all of the senate candidates in Michigan are willing to tolerate the tech companies to some degree.
On Callais, I know Republicans probably could easily draw out a few more seats in much of the south, but would they really risk doing that in places like Georgia, where Democrats look primed to have a banner year, or Texas where they already might have overextended themselves?
They can probably draw out Sanford Bishop, but maybe they’d be deterred from doing so if Miracle Rankin and Jen Jordan win the GASC races in a couple weeks. If they do, we can flip the court in 2028. I can’t imagine they would want to unpack Atlanta any further.
As for Texas, that map seems like it was built in a house of cards of temporary good hispanic numbers for Republicans. If the Talarico +30 numbers with hispanic polls are accurate, that map is going to crumble.
if he leaves the scene and is replaced by a democratic governor than we are fine, we just need to get to January without a special session
No way Kemp would stand in the way of redistricting. He did the right thing in 2020 because he viewed it a constitutional imperative. I see no such indication he'd feel that way about this topic. We need to win GA-Gov this year....
They could probably get rid of McBath or the old Scott seat - they already removed Bordeaux with relative ease, and that wasn't based on race.
McBath’s and Scott’s seats are way too blue for seats like GA-07, GA-10, and GA-11 to absorb.
Bordeaux held a marginal seat, all the D seats in Atlanta now are deep blue sinks.
I will add that dismantling the 13th would be harder, depending on if it becomes a swing area that goes to reliably blue Athens.
if we win georgia governor's race and narrow margins in state legislature as expected how likely is any redraw?
Well obviously a Dem governor wouldn’t sign any maps. It would depend on whether Kemp calls a special session, right?
Once again Dems prove to be their own worst enemy by failing to come together behind a candidate & fighting internally.
Do you mean the NY-11 thing?
NY-11, CA Gov, MI Sen . . .
I agree, but I could also name a number of instances where Republicans have competitive primaries and Democrats have a clear frontrunner. GA-Sen, MI-Gov, IA-Gov, TX-Sen (post-March)
In MI, former Dem Mayor of Detroit is running for Gov as an Independent, which could hurt Benson. Ego and grievance can be deadly.
I think the crisis on the CA Gov race has past. In a weird way, Sewell being a sexual predator turned out to have possibly saved us from disaster. (And as a side note can you imagine what would have happened if Sewell ended up in the general and then all that came out!)
I'm not sure I'm comfortable yet, also not sure the 2 (apparently) viable Dems are strong candidates, but, as you noted, timing is everything!
I was thinking that too. I suspect he would still have won in this environment, but that would definitely have been a headache we didn't need...
This is a bad argument. Voters should choose candidates in primaries. The selection should be made for them.
In a jungle primary, the top 2 survive. Assuming Democratic voters would rather not have a choice of 2 Republicans in the general election, they are wise to focus on 1 or 2 max to avoid elimination. Nobody else is making a choice for them. It's just rational strategy.
Who is "they"? A nebulous collective of party insiders yet again taking away choices from voters?
Yeah, no thanks.
Fuck these people. Worst Court ever.
Minersville v. Gobitis (which was overturned only three years later) was another pre-Roberts Court case that was among the worst SCOTUS has ever issued.
The more notable cases of Engel v. Vitale and Tinker v. Des Moines also ruled heavily in the opposite direction. On discussion of the worst courts, I will say Warren is probably the best.
Korematsu and Chaplinsky too, for similar reasons to Gobitis (WW2 fever), though Chaplinsky was never directly overruled, just narrowed.
They won't be remembered alongside those because they are disguised in arcane voting law, and don't provoke the same emotional reaction from random folks as those travesties. Republicans have until very recently mastered the art of passing laws that enable them to wield extraordinary power that voters could not give a shit about (i.e. anything to do with voting, drawing lines, etc.). Dems are only just started to awaken to this w/r/t redistricting.
The Taney court is also pretty up there.
Yes, Dred Scott is the worst single Supreme Court decision in U.S. history. But out of the top 25 worst SCOTUS decisions, this Court has about 20 of them.
Might be a little bit of an exaggeration. But not by much.
yeah probably. Shelby County is in the top 5
This case, Citizens United v. FEC, Dobbs v. Jackson, Shelby v. Holder (like you said) and McDonald v. Chicago are probably the 5 worst of the Roberts court.
Bruen. The second amendment case.
Callais summarized:
Writing for the Supreme Court’s majority today, Justice Alito wrote that the justices were updating the 40-year-old framework that courts look to for evaluating the use of race in drawing up congressional districts, essentially saying that lawmakers only violate the law if they intentionally use race to draw district maps to limit the power of minority voters.
For decades, lawmakers have crafted congressional districts with a focus on ensuring that minority voters had the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice, often aiming to create majority-minority districts as they labored under scrutiny from federal courts that guaranteed the rights of minorities because of the Voting Rights Act.
But Justice Alito wrote that to successfully challenge district maps under the Voting Rights Act now, challengers will need to show proof a state “intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.”
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04/29/us/supreme-court-voting-rights/6d70745c-97b1-510b-9cef-662143e25237?smid=url-share
This and the Dobbs decision that he just HAD to write the majority opinions on.
Up yours, Alito.
As well as LULAC v. Abbott more recently
I mean, if there was a way for SCOTUS to galvanize public opinion against themselves and the Republicans right before a midterm, they just had to take it. Dobbs clearly worked well for them now that so many states now have reproductive rights in their constitutions now, so why not do this in an unpopular environment?
I mean, if this ensures a blue tsunami and we flip the Senate, that'll be a good thing in the long run. If we flip enough Senate seats (and not just FL and OH), we'll have enough Senators locked in for six years (provided that Dems win the presidency in 2028) to really fix the damage SCOTUS and TACO have done. And then oust MAGA idiots like Budd and Johnson in 2028 to pad the Senate majority.
Honestly, I don't think most voters care about relatively arcane topics like the VRA....
Some of the discussion up thread was viewing this as decently better than the worst case scenario.
I'm not seeing it. This is pretty much a complete gutting of VRA districts. It's in line with the bribery ruling, that it's only a bribe if they write "Bribe" on the check memo -- the limitations on illegality are so easy to bypass that they might as well not be there.
IMO this also adds a worry for a big plan we had for our next trifecta: nation wide bans on gerrymandering. The court has shown their hand and it's hard to imagine that they would avoid making a similar ruling about such a law. We need to operate under the assumption that the current court will stretch "constitutional" to the absurd in order to help republicans attain or hold power.
The Chief Justice in his own words in an opinion said Congress needed to pass a ban on gerrymandering in order to stop it.
Roberts is a partisan hack and will happily abandon things he said decades ago if it favors his party. Even if, somehow, he decided to be consistent, it doesn't matter: there are 6 conservatives on SCOTUS.
That's when the court was 5-4
Which then the court would strike down, or did he mean constitutional amendment for which he knows will never happen. These are republican hacks on the court.
I don't think this indicates that they would strike down a nationwide ban of partisan gerrymandering. As for section 2, I haven't had a chance to read the entire opinion, but it appears to go a long way to restoring the 1980 Bolden decision, which held that to establish a section 2 violation, the challengers must show a discriminatory purpose rather than a discriminatory effect, which Congress reversed when it reauthorized the Voting Rights Act in 1982. That's long been a goal of Roberts. But how many of the existing majority-minority districts might fall may depend on whether the courts conclude that they were created in response to dilution of minority voting power as opposed to creating a majority-minority district. The court did not overrule its Milligan decision of three years ago, so it's still good law.
I said this in a thread last week -- we need to pass simple, stand-alone, easy-for-the-population-to-understand bills to limit gerrymandering federally. It's the only way.. not some monstrosity voting bill that Republicans will pick apart because it had 23 things in it they didn't like surrounding 2 good ideas.
1 - Can only redistrict once per decade
2 - Districts must match partisanship/election results (or whatever metric)
3 - Can't be drawn to favor a person or party (and how that is determined)
And also require every state to set up independent or bipartisan commissions so everyone gets a seat at the negotiating table.
commissions, especially evenly split ones are a quick way to relinquish map drawing and control right back to (conservative) judges.
Totally agree on #1. Disagree strongly on #2 - we don't need to create Senate 2.0 by forcing house seats to match state partisanship. #3 is a good idea, but seems pretty undefinable/unenforceable to me.
having read the opinion fully that is my takeaway, however portions of alito's logic are so tortured that I have difficulty understanding in what scenario a lawsuit challenging improper dilution of the black vote would ever be successful
Under your interpretation, do we have literally any recourse then? Or are we permanently screwed?
Expand the court.
How would that be accomplished? Forgive me for being naive, but wouldn’t that require a constitutional amendment? If all the seats are gerrymandered, how would we even get a majority for that?
The existence of the courts is set up by the constitution. The size of the courts, including SCOTUS, is managed by statute, not the constitution.
Expanding the court requires no more than a governing trifecta and the willpower to use it.
I was not aware. That being said, how could we get a trifecta if all the seats are gerrymandered?
Packing the court is a fantasy that requires a level of ruthlessness and hardball that Democrats are seemingly incapable of operating at, at a DNA level.
Schumer and Jeffries are going to be the bruisers to see this done? Lmao. Not with 20 AOCs in the Senate could we do this.
Retaliatory gerrymandering?
Would that get us enough seats though? How would we do that?
+4 NY
+4 CO
+3 PA
+2 NJ
+2 MN
+2 WI
+1 IL
+1 MD
+1 OR
+1 WA
All possible with trifectas, passing referendums to bypass commissons, and favorable courts.
Good point. Rescinding my claim.
I’d agree with all but PA, WI, and maybe even MN. PA and WI would be incredibly risky in states that went for Trump two out of three times and where Republicans have a very good chance of getting trifectas in 2030 (I’d probably say they are favored there if a D is elected president in 2028). Better to put independent commissions on the ballot there as a backstop to future Republican gerrymandering of the House seats and legislatures.
In MN, we have had a trifecta for all of 4 of the last 36 years and the state senate is very difficult. Remember we came within 8000 votes of a GOP trifecta for the 2011 redistricting. It may be prudent to put independent redistricting on the ballot here, but not a no brainer the same way WI and PA are.
i do not think it is possible to come up with a map that is 11-1 democratic in nj, 9-3 sure, but 10-2 how?
I think we could get +2 out of WA and we need to be eliminating ALL blue state commissions/non-partisan redistricting setups until we have national redistricting reform. That means, CO, NJ, WA, NY, CA - all of those laws need to go.
Agreed. I don't get the sigh of relief here. This ruling was everything we feared it would be.
In some ways I'd say it's the worst outcome: it avoids the headline "VRA Overturned" while getting that as the effect of the outcome all the same.
The method of determination they have comes down to arbitrary rulings from the court, meaning we could very easily see uneven enforcement between red states and blue states.
There's always ways for things to get worse but nothing is really jumping to my mind here.
This sums up my feelings well, the new "test" seems to only block racial gerrymandering that serves no partisan purpose, which is rarely possible and pointless.