The Supreme Court just made gerrymandering nearly untouchable - Ian Millhiser @ Vox

[In It to Win It]

Vox - Gift Link

The Supreme Court reinstated a Texas gerrymander that is expected to give Republicans five additional seats in the US House on Thursday evening, after a lower federal court struck that gerrymander down. As is often the case in politically contentious cases, the justices appear to have voted entirely along party lines, with only the Court’s three Democrats dissenting.

The Court’s decision in Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is a victory for the Republican Party. And it is likely to have brutal implications for all future federal lawsuits challenging gerrymandered maps. Though the Court’s order in LULAC is brief, it imposes such heavy burdens on gerrymandering plaintiffs that few, if any, such plaintiffs will be able to succeed in future cases.

Indeed, LULAC is so hostile to anti-gerrymandering suits that many civil rights lawyers and plaintiffs may simply decide not to bother challenging illegal maps, because their chances of prevailing in court will be so hopeless.

The Supreme Court just made gerrymandering nearly untouchable www.vox.com/politics/471...

— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser.bsky.social) 2025-12-05T16:27:20.714Z

[yourout]

1. The only way this gets fixed is if it becomes so toxic that both sides can't stomach it anymore.

Hopefully at some point it'll get so bad that they actually will do something about it.

In the meantime Dems have to fight fire with fire and push the line as far as humanly possible

[pat_k]

6. Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), which declared claims of partisan gerrymandering "non-justicable" in Federal Court...

... was the first, near-fatal blow against fair representation in the "people's house."

Yes, it is devastating that the six black-robed traitors on the court have now raised the bar to near-impossible levels on the only grounds that remained a valid federal claim after Rucho v. Common Cause -- i.e., racial gerrymandering. However, it was the traitorous decision in Rucho v. Common Cause that was perhaps the most consequential corruption of the institutions and processes by which our will is measured and made manifest in my lifetime (65 years).

The sane voices of dissent to the intolerably Un-American and Un-Constitutional Rucho v. Common Cause decision, Kagan, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, argued, correctly, that the majority abandoned the Court's duty to protect democracy, asserting that federal courts could and should address partisan gerrymandering because it undermines fair elections and equal participation, with some lower courts already developing workable standards to evaluate these harmful practices. They contended the majority's refusal to act would encourage more extreme polarization and that modern technology makes gerrymandering more precise and damaging than ever.

Surprise, surprise! That ruling has caused more devastating and more lasting damage than the worst of what the dissenters predicted.

Rucho v. Common Cause is another of a tragically long list of horrific decisions that must be reversed if we are to have a hope in hell of quickly effecting change for the better.

We WILL achieve transformative change, but with the tools the black-robed traitors on SCOTUS have deprived us of, it will be an uphill slog.

SCOTUS reforms MUST be top of the agenda. The modest proposals Biden made after the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States issued its mealy-mouthed report are just a beginning. For example:

Term Limits: An 18-year term for justices, ensuring more regular turnover.

Ethics Code: A mandatory, enforceable code of conduct, requiring recusal for conflicts and prohibiting political activity.

Presidential Immunity: A constitutional amendment clarifying that presidents aren't immune from prosecution for crimes committed in office, reacting to recent Court rulings.

Job 1 is expansion of the court to overturn the most destructive and Un-Constitutional decisions that have been issued by the Roberts court.

[Historic NY]

2. Time to crank up the blue states program to gut Gopers.

[pat_k]

3. Actually, they did that back in 2019.

In Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), five black-robed men, Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, treasonously ruled that challenges to any partisan gerrymandered map were "non-justiciable" at the federal level. In other words, the Federal courts can't weigh in on claims of partisan gerrymandering.

The sane voices of dissent to the intolerably Un-American and Un-Constitutional decision, Kagan, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, argued, correctly, that the majority abandoned the Court's duty to protect democracy, asserting that federal courts could and should address partisan gerrymandering because it undermines fair elections and equal participation, with some lower courts already developing workable standards to evaluate these harmful practices. They contended the majority's refusal to act would encourage more extreme polarization and that modern technology makes gerrymandering more precise and damaging than ever.

Surprise, surprise! That ruling has caused more devastating and more lasting damage than the worst of what the dissenters predicted.

Rucho v. Common Cause is another of the horrific decisions that must be reversed if we are to have a hope in hell of quickly effecting change for the better.

We WILL achieve transformative change, but with the tools the black-robed traitors on SCOTUS have deprived us of, it will be an uphill slog.

SCOTUS reforms MUST be top of the agenda. The modest proposals Biden made after the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States issued its mealy-mouthed report are just a beginning. For example:

Term Limits: An 18-year term for justices, ensuring more regular turnover.

Ethics Code: A mandatory, enforceable code of conduct, requiring recusal for conflicts and prohibiting political activity.

Presidential Immunity: A constitutional amendment clarifying that presidents aren't immune from prosecution for crimes committed in office, reacting to recent Court rulings.

Job 1 is expansion of the court to overturn the most destructive and Un-Constitutional decisions that have been issued by the Roberts court.

[Mz Pip]

4. I'm just waiting

Last edited Sat Dec 6, 2025, 10:11 AM - Edit history (1)

for them to rule on what California did with an actual initiative approved by the voters.

Im sure Thomas and Alito are scraping the bottoms of obscure legal rulings to figure out a way to f*ck us over.

[pat_k]

7. Actually, you might take time to read the "logic"...

Scalia's opinions, that so many cited as brilliant, and literally insane.

I don't think they are "scraping" anything that has any actual basis in constitutional legal analysis. They are probably just finding bits of insanity to cite.

Way back when, I took time to try to decipher Scalia's seemingly endless, convoluted, bizarre logic.

After subjecting myself to slogging through a handful of decisions, I could only conclude that it was an "emperor has no clothes" situation. A situation where the "innocent" (me) could see what the "experts" were afraid to admit. There were "conclusions" that were literally insane, but they were buried in unsupported, convoluted strangeness, When you dug a bit, it seemed pretty clear to me that the "legal conclusions" presented as "obvious" had no basis in decipherable legal reasoning whatsoever. Over and over I was flummoxed in a way that had nothing to do with lack of knowledge, but everything to do with amazement that there weren't more people declaring the man a mad zealot whose opinions had no straight-line grounding in actual law or precedent.

The opinions of the current crop of black-robbed traitors -- at least the couple of opinions I've taken the time to pull apart as a non-lawyer (but nevertheless savvy human capable of high-level analysis) -- are not quite as convoluted and bizarre, but seemingly pivotal points are literally gobbledygook when you actually do some searches on the bases cited.

These traitors literally have no ground to stand on, but I fear that too many "legal experts" who recognize the truth think we, folks in the general public, aren't smart enough to "get" an analysis that demonstrates the Un-Constitutional insanity of it all, so they only speak in general terms that leave the legalistic, Un-Constitutional, gobbledygook of crazy, Un-American zealots with law degrees standing as somehow an "alternate" and valid analysis.

[Mz Pip]

10. I remember

when my son was in law school he commented how maddening it was to read Scalia’s opinions.

[Johonny]

5. Dems have to pack the courts

If they ever have such power to do so again. This court is garbage and the justices have no interest in America or Americans

[Mister Ed]

8. Please, please, please everyone! Never call court reform "court packing".

A call to "pack the courts!" sounds as unfair and dishonest as it can possibly sound, and will never, ever gain popular support.

In truth, it is the GOP that has packed the courts (especially the Supreme Court) with corrupt, nakedly partisan hacks. We should call for court reform, call for courts to be balanced, call for courts to be unpacked - anything but calling to "pack the courts!".

[yourout]

9. I think it should be a rotational bench of 50 judges.

One for each state.
Currently too much power in too few hands