“We are a higher court, but not a better one”: Kagan rages at SCOTUS decision to allow Texas maps

The Supreme Court gave Texas the go-ahead to use Republican-favoring maps in the midterms on Thursday staying a lower court s ruling that the maps were likely the end of an unconstitutional racial gerrymander In a blistering dissent multiple times longer than the court s order Justice Elena Kagan hammered the court s conservatives for the casual way they tossed aside the lower court s extensive work to determine that race was a key factor in the drawing of the maps The District Court conducted a nine-day hearing involving the testimony of nearly two dozen eyewitnesses and the introduction of thousands of exhibits It sifted through the resulting factual record spanning selected pages It assessed the credibility of each of the spectators it had seen and heard in the courtroom And after considering all the evidence it held that the answer was clear she wrote Texas largely divided its citizens along racial lines to create its new pro-Republican House map in violation of the Constitution s Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments Related New Texas maps Doom for Democrats or do they hold a hidden prize Kagan added that the majority offered no evidence that the district court had erred in its ruling and failed to follow its own standards for review The court issued a -page opinion recounting in detail its factual findings Yet this Court reverses that judgment based on its perusal over a holiday weekend of a cold paper record she wrote in a dissent joined by the court s liberals We are a higher court than the District Court but we are not a better one when it comes to making such a fact-based decision Start your day with essential news from Salon Sign up for our free morning newsletter Crash Syllabus Texas redrew its maps largely at the insistence of President Donald Trump who feared a blue wave in might stymie his agenda In her dissent Kagan lays out a detailed chronology of the way that Trump framed the remarkable redistricting as a legal necessity Those maps passed the Texas legislature following a dramatic stand-off between state-level Democratic representatives and law enforcement The state Democrats fled Texas to deny a quorum to the legislature knowing that the maps would pass easily thanks to the state s large Republican majority The SCOTUS order all but guarantees the new maps will be in effect for the midterms Several Democratic states have floated their own partisan gerrymander to counterbalance the seat-swing in Texas with California voters passing a proposition to redraw their maps in a way that favors Democrats Read more about this topic Texas redistricting fight was a testing ground for the Trump administration s latest legal strategy Democrats maybe can t win the redistricting wars The GOP plot to gain seats without winning any more votes The post We are a higher court but not a better one Kagan rages at SCOTUS decision to allow Texas maps appeared first on Salon com