The Supreme Court Drops the Hammer on Democrat Redistricting Games and Sets Up a Coming Death Blow – Opinion

Republicans have won a major victory after several days of negative news regarding redistricting, which included a North Carolina decision that was not in their favor for the GOP-drawn maps. US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Alabama’s lower court ordered it to redraw the Congressional map.

That means a 6-1 Republican to Democrat map will now go into effect in 2022, and given the makeup of the Supreme Court, there’s no reason to believe it gets struck down at any point past that.

BREAKING: By a 5–4 vote, with Roberts joining the liberals in dissent, the Supreme Court halts a lower court order that required Alabama to redraw its congressional map, which diluted Black votes in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) February 7, 2022

The SCOTUS vote is a big win for Republicans. It also defeats a group of Dems/civil right groups that was seeking an additional Black seat in AL and LA/SC. For 2022 and beyond, the 6R-1D GOP map may remain in effect.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) February 7, 2022

RedState colleague and I speculated that Democrats’ attempt to challenge the Alabama map because of the Voting rights Act was an utter miscalculation. While they were never the dominant party in stopping the GOP-drawn map of Alabama, it was worse than that for Democrats. The court also granted certiorari in the case. It is likely that a final decision will be issued in 2023. This decision will not be favorable to the Republicans who wish to continue using the VRA to create Democrat-stacked maps and deny them the right to gerrymander.

This means that Democrats lost in the specific case, and could also lose more across the nation in regard to how they use racial-quotas in congressional districts, once a final decision has been made.

It doesn’t take a legal genius to see that a court skeptical about the idea of racial quotas (for the Roberts-doubters, I’d point you toward his record on affirmative action and various voting rights grifts as well as his opinions acknowledging that no matter how virtuous the intent, the government can’t make decisions based primarily on race) that has already done away with “pre-clearance” isn’t very far away from saying that unless you can prove that diluting the minority vote was the intent of drawing a district, the state’s version of the map prevails.

It is hard to imagine the irony that this decision could bring. Alabama is being sued by activist groups over its 30-year-old map. This could lead to the end of the country’s racial gerrymandering system.

That’s exactly what appears to be happening, and while Justice John Roberts wussed out as usual in the decision to lift the order, his dissent notes that he believes the only holdup is that the court needs to tear apart past bad precedent before he flips. In other words, he’s likely to join a 6-3 majority next year in delivering a decisive blow to Democrat attempts to rig the gerrymandering process (i.e. where they can draw 22-4 D to R maps in New York but Republican states can’t return the favor).

The risk of getting scorched earth was ever present in GOP redistricting. The Supreme Court is not favorable to the left’s point of view on the VRA. Democrats are now going to pay much more for not allowing things in Alabama slide than if they let one of their seats go South. The Supreme Court’s bizarre decision last week in North Carolina means that Republicans from North Carolina will also be seeking relief. It’s open season now, and while Democrats were busy spiking the football on redistricting, the game obviously isn’t over yet.

This decision will set the stage for the end of many unconstitutional VRA provisions that Democrats have used to unfairly stack the deck. Gerrymandering should be legal, which it is. The spoils go to the winner.