{"id":185572,"date":"2014-10-08T18:50:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-08T23:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/10\/08\/federal-court-rules-that-virginia-congressional-districts-are-unconstitutional\/"},"modified":"2014-10-08T18:50:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-08T23:50:00","slug":"federal-court-rules-that-virginia-congressional-districts-are-unconstitutional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/10\/08\/federal-court-rules-that-virginia-congressional-districts-are-unconstitutional\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal Court Rules that Virginia Congressional Districts are Unconstitutional"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 300px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/7tYQPjY.jpg\" rel=\"lytebox\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" bordercolor=\"white\" src=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/7tYQPjY.jpg\" width=\"290\" \/><\/a><br \/><i>Nope.  Nothing Suspicious Here<\/i><\/div>\n<p>What a surprise.  The 4<sup>th<\/sup> U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/virginia-politics\/court-throws-out-virginia-congressional-map\/2014\/10\/07\/97fb866a-4e56-11e4-8c24-487e92bc997b_story.html\">the 3<sup>rd<\/sup> Congressional district was drawn entirely on the basis of race<\/a>, and so is unconstitutional:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">A panel of federal judges on Tuesday declared Virginia\u2019s congressional maps unconstitutional because they concentrate African American voters into a single district at the expense of their influence elsewhere.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The decision, handed down in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, orders the Virginia General Assembly to draw up new congressional maps by April \u2014 potentially launching a frenzied and highly political battle for survival within Virginia\u2019s congressional delegation.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The order delivered another victory for Democratic plaintiffs hoping to break up black-majority districts, which they say have been drawn by Republicans who have used the Voting Rights Act to dilute the influence of minority voters.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">A similar case in Alabama in which Republicans prevailed will be heard by the Supreme Court this term.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cWe\u2019re obviously thrilled with the results,\u201d said Marc Elias, a lawyer on the Virginia case who represented two voters from the district where the unconstitutional redistricting took place. \u201cThe Republicans engaged in impermissible racial gerrymandering in a cynical effort to gain seats. .\u2009.\u2009. We look forward to the state doing a new redistricting to comply with the court\u2019s orders.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The current Congressman for this district won with 81% of the vote in the last election.  Of course this is all about minimizing the black vote in the state by concentrating them in one place.<\/p>\n<p>I wish that this had come down in time to effect <b>this<\/b> election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nope. Nothing Suspicious Here What a surprise. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the 3rd Congressional district was drawn entirely on the basis of race, and so is unconstitutional: A panel of federal judges on Tuesday declared Virginia\u2019s congressional maps unconstitutional because they concentrate African American voters into a single district &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[971,972,1084],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-justice","category-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185572"}],"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=185572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185572\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}