{"id":180930,"date":"2016-11-21T19:47:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-22T00:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/11\/21\/i-expect-trumps-supreme-court-to-overturn-this-on-appeal\/"},"modified":"2016-11-21T19:47:00","modified_gmt":"2016-11-22T00:47:00","slug":"i-expect-trumps-supreme-court-to-overturn-this-on-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/11\/21\/i-expect-trumps-supreme-court-to-overturn-this-on-appeal\/","title":{"rendered":"I Expect Trump&#8217;s Supreme Court to Overturn This on Appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A federal court has just ruled that <a href=\"http:\/\/host.madison.com\/wsj\/news\/local\/govt-and-politics\/federal-judges-panel-finds-state-redistricting-plan-an-unconstitutional-gerrymander\/article_c7a71b38-b98c-5b9f-aef5-908cc72ee068.html\">Wisconsin&#8217;s state house district are an unconstitutional Gerrymander<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">A panel of federal judges on Monday ruled that Wisconsin\u2019s 2011 legislative redistricting plan, created by Republican leaders virtually in secret, is an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The map \u201cwas intended to burden the representational rights of Democratic voters \u2026 by impeding their ability to translate their votes into legislative seats,\u201d wrote federal appeals court Judge Kenneth Ripple, the senior judge on the three-judge panel, adding that \u201cthe discriminatory effect is not explained by the political geography of Wisconsin nor is it justified by a legitimate state interest.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cConsequently, Act 43 constitutes an unconstitutional political gerrymander,\u201d Ripple wrote.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The 116-page decision, with a 40-page dissent from U.S. District Judge William Griesbach, was issued several months after the panel heard testimony in federal court in Madison. U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb, the third judge on the panel, joined Ripple in the court\u2019s 2-1 decision.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The Democrats contend they have found a way to measure unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders designed to give a \u201clarge and durable\u201d advantage in elections to one party \u2014 a measure the U.S. Supreme Court said was lacking in previous redistricting cases. The measure, called the efficiency gap, shows how cracking (breaking up blocs of Democratic voters) and packing (concentrating Democrats within certain districts) results in wasted votes \u2014 excess votes for the winners in safe districts and perpetually inadequate votes for the losers.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Lawyers for the Democrats said the 2011 plan, which changed boundaries for all of the state\u2019s Congressional and state Senate and Assembly districts, was drawn specifically to disenfranchise Democratic voters.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Republicans have countered that as the majority party, they can draw the maps any way they choose, short of creating districts that disenfranchise racial minorities.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I really hope that the ruling sticks, but I expect that whatever partisan hack that Trump appoints to be on the prevailing side of a 5-4 decision saying that the voters can go Cheney themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A federal court has just ruled that Wisconsin&#8217;s state house district are an unconstitutional Gerrymander: A panel of federal judges on Monday ruled that Wisconsin\u2019s 2011 legislative redistricting plan, created by Republican leaders virtually in secret, is an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.The map \u201cwas intended to burden the representational rights of Democratic voters \u2026 by impeding &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[791,833,902],"class_list":["post-180930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-civil-rights","tag-justice","tag-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180930"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}