Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every
Speaker 1: day we bring you insight an analysis into the most
Speaker 1: important legal news of the day. You can find more
Speaker 1: episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple podcast, SoundCloud
Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. Greg this was
Speaker 1: what I would call a brazen jerrymander in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: The redistricting committee included part as an advantage as one
Speaker 1: of the criteria for the map. What was the focus
Speaker 1: of the Justice's questions, Well, part of it was what
Speaker 1: you just talked about, the fact that this was an
Speaker 1: extreme jerrymander, both in terms of the intent explicit by
Speaker 1: Republicans that they were trying to get as many GOP
Speaker 1: seats as they could uh and the effect of it.
Speaker 1: It basically worked. Republicans in the first election got ten
Speaker 1: out of the thirteen seats. On the second election they
Speaker 1: got at least nine. There's one district that's being revoted,
Speaker 1: and that even though in both cases the vote overall
Speaker 1: was pretty much fifty fifty. So that was a big
Speaker 1: That was one focus of the case, and then the
Speaker 1: second focus was how are we going to handle this
Speaker 1: as courts if we say that this map is too
Speaker 1: PARTI said, how are we going to draw a line
Speaker 1: that will let us judge all these other maps we
Speaker 1: may be called upon to rule on. So the Court
Speaker 1: has been willing to restrict gerrymandering based on race, why
Speaker 1: not so for those based on politics? That that's another
Speaker 1: good question. The Court has in the past explicitly said
Speaker 1: taking partisanship into account is okay, at least to some degree.
Speaker 1: They said, that's a legitimate consideration. You also have to
Speaker 1: look at other things like keeping counties together and you know,
Speaker 1: not having lines that look too ridiculous with race. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, there is this this notion that that
Speaker 1: is something we really don't want to do unless we
Speaker 1: have a strong reason for it. We don't like classifying
Speaker 1: people according to their race, even when we're drawing congressional districts. Now,
Speaker 1: the Court has allowed some consideration of race, and part
Speaker 1: of the Voting Rights Act there the primary ideas to
Speaker 1: make sure that racial minorities are able to elect somebody
Speaker 1: of their choice, to prevent districts from being drawn so that, say,
Speaker 1: a heavily black city is unable to elect a black
Speaker 1: representative if that's what the people want. So race and
Speaker 1: politics sort of start from different places in the minds
Speaker 1: of the justices. What is the defense given to maps
Speaker 1: that are clearly out of whack? Well, part of the
Speaker 1: part of the defense is that this is just not
Speaker 1: something courts are competent to resolve. And this was a
Speaker 1: concern that Chief Justice Roberts Ray's last term when the
Speaker 1: Court considered these issues, and the lawyer defending the North
Speaker 1: Carolina map raised the issue again, which is that in
Speaker 1: every case, the Supreme Court is going to be called
Speaker 1: upon to decide whether Republicans win or Democrats win, and
Speaker 1: that is something that could cast a cloud on the
Speaker 1: Court's legitimacy as a nonpartisan actor. Now, the counter argument
Speaker 1: to that, which lawyers a acking the map put forward
Speaker 1: is that the Court, you know, will look like it
Speaker 1: is making a political decision if it does not get involved.
Speaker 1: So it may be that the Court can't really win here.
Speaker 1: The question will be whether they think there's any way
Speaker 1: they can separate out extreme partisan jurymandering from cases where
Speaker 1: politics are considered, but but not too much. Do any
Speaker 1: of the justices appear to you to have key votes? Yes,
Speaker 1: so the key votes are almost certainly coming from John Roberts,
Speaker 1: which is something we're getting used to, and the new
Speaker 1: Justice Brett Kavanaugh on both of them asked questions of
Speaker 1: both sides, and by the end of the two arguments
Speaker 1: today the Court also heard arguments in the Maryland case,
Speaker 1: it wasn't obvious which way they were going to come out,
Speaker 1: especially Kavanaugh. He did essay during the North Carolina case
Speaker 1: that the notion of proportional representation, this idea that you know,
Speaker 1: if a state of split fifty fifty, each party should
Speaker 1: get roughly the representatives, that that was at least something
Speaker 1: that was pretty easy to apply judicially manageable. But he
Speaker 1: also pointed to Supreme Court precedents and key opinions by
Speaker 1: swing justices like Sandrada O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy that in
Speaker 1: the past have been clear that the Court didn't want
Speaker 1: to try to mandate proportional representation, that that is not
Speaker 1: something that's in the Constitution. So based on the argument,
Speaker 1: Justice Kavanaugh's vote is up in the air at this point.
Speaker 1: So last time the Court sort of skipped the main
Speaker 1: issue and went to the details. Could that happen again?
Speaker 1: It could, but it seems harder to the last time around.
Speaker 1: In this case involving Wisconsin, the Court said that the
Speaker 1: voters suing there didn't have standing. They hadn't shown or
Speaker 1: at least they hadn't shown that they have standing. They
Speaker 1: hadn't shown that they were injured in a way that
Speaker 1: would let them sue, And the court strongly suggested that
Speaker 1: any suits should happen not on a statewide basis, but
Speaker 1: on a district by district basis. A voter saying, hey,
Speaker 1: my particular vote didn't count the way it should because
Speaker 1: the Republican their Democrats who were in charge of joining
Speaker 1: the maps, discriminated against me because I don't re with them.
Speaker 1: The cases before the Court today did not seem like
Speaker 1: they had that same sort of problem. In North Carolina's case,
Speaker 1: for example, they have voters from every congressional district who
Speaker 1: who are suing, and they are generally saying, my district,
Speaker 1: not the state wide map, but my district was drawn
Speaker 1: in an unconstitutional way. And in general, there wasn't a
Speaker 1: whole lot of discussion about that standing issue in the court.
Speaker 1: So it seems like the Court is going to get
Speaker 1: to the merits and beside the bigger questions about whether
Speaker 1: maps like these can ever be challenged, So then what
Speaker 1: are the implications here? Will have wide effects as new
Speaker 1: maps are drawn, certainly will have wide effects, both potentially
Speaker 1: for some maps that are in place right now, but
Speaker 1: also for the next round of map drawing, which will
Speaker 1: happen after the is And you know, these are really
Speaker 1: fundamental questions about, you know, how how our democracy is
Speaker 1: supposed to work. I mean, the people who criticized jerrymandering
Speaker 1: say we end up with uncompetitive elections that don't reflect
Speaker 1: the will of the vote. And people on the other
Speaker 1: side say that the judiciary really needs to stay out
Speaker 1: of something that is so deeply political, and that the
Speaker 1: system can correct itself. Ultimately, the voters, if they're fed
Speaker 1: up enough with gerrymandering, can elect different people, maybe not
Speaker 1: in their particular district, at least they can elect a
Speaker 1: different governor in a state, or perhaps they can put
Speaker 1: in place a commission to draw the lines so that
Speaker 1: there are other tools, is the argument, and the Court
Speaker 1: is going to have to decide which one of those
Speaker 1: two viewpoints is correct. I noticed in your story that
Speaker 1: Justice Kavanaugh asked questions about independent commissions. Could the Court
Speaker 1: simply say independent commissions are the way to go. It could,
Speaker 1: and that would be really interesting. A few years ago,
Speaker 1: the Court upheld independent commissions, but it did it on
Speaker 1: a five to four vote, and it had seemed like
Speaker 1: there was a possibility that this more conservative court might
Speaker 1: reverse that decision at some point, overturn it. But both
Speaker 1: Kavanaugh and especially just As Gorset's use those commissions as
Speaker 1: one reason why they or at least anything that the
Speaker 1: Court shouldn't get involved. If that's part of the rationale here,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to see how the Court could later
Speaker 1: turn around and say no, those commissions are unconstitutional as well.
Speaker 1: Thanks Greg, I know you have more interesting arguments coming up.
Speaker 1: That's Greg Star, Bloomberg New Supreme Court reporter. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and
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Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brasso. This is Bloomberg. Yeah,