Supreme Court ruling could affect CA voting district maps

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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When California independent redistribution commissions drew new state congressional and legislative district maps after the 2010 and 2020 censuses, their members were flatly told by legal advisers that the federal Voting Rights Act required them to maximize opportunities for ethnic communities to elect officials.

The commissions went to great lengths to fold this mandate into the geographic boundaries of the districts, even if that required them to ignore city and county lines.

The effect was to increase the ranks of black, Latino, and Asian representatives in Congress and the state Capitol. It also helped Democrats gain a large majority in the state legislature and congressional delegation, leaving Republicans with only token representation.

The commission’s redistricting plans were effectively gerrymanders, if one defines that term to mean seeking predetermined outcomes — even though the commission was created by two ballot measures in 2008 and 2010in response to gerrymanders enacted by the legislature in previous decades.

Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature asked voters to set aside the commission’s overwhelmingly pro-Democratic congressional districts and accept even more lopsided maps to give Democrats five more seats. It was in response to efforts backed by President Donald Trump to rig more Republican districts in Texas and other red states.

Voters agreed by passing Proposition 50. This year’s election will test whether the gerrymander was successful and whether it had enough impact to restore Democratic control of the House of Representatives.

While setting aside the redistricting commission’s cards, Prop. 50 promised that the maps would be effective not only this year, but also for the 2028 and 2030 election cycles, after which the commission process would be rebuilt using data from the 2030 census.

It’s hard to believe that when the time comes, Democrats will actually allow the committee to redraw the maps. Party leaders never liked the commission process in the first place, and a return to it could force them to give up some of the seats they won this year.

In addition, California’s congressional delegation, which now includes 52 members, is it will probably drop four or five places due to the lack of population growth in the state, which means even fewer positions to allocate.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court gave California’s Democratic Party leadership one more reason to eliminate the redistricting commission through weakening the Voting Rights Act on the drawing of districts to maximize the representation of non-white ethnic groups.

By a 6-3 vote, the court struck down Louisiana’s congressional maps, which a lower court ordered had been redrawn to create another district for the state’s black residents. The split decision declared that the “racial gerrymander” violated the equal rights language of the US Constitution.

The revised congressional districts that California created through a vote last year will not be immediately affected by Wednesday’s decision, but it could affect states that have considered making changes but have not yet done so.

Additionally, this may affect new California maps in the future. When they were placed on the ballot, Democratic leaders boasted that they were in full compliance with the provisions of the Voting Rights Act as they have now been reinterpreted. Republicans could argue through a lawsuit that the maps are unconstitutional under the court’s new standard.

The Supreme Court’s decision will also affect how California’s reapportionment commission will approach its task after the 2030 census, eliminating or at least weakening the mandate that guided its actions in the past.

Democratic leaders could minimize the court’s ruling by persuading voters to abolish the commission, thereby returning redistricting to the legislature they overwhelmingly control — something they would likely prefer anyway.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.