The Supreme Court’s Critical Test

FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | JUNE 20, 2019

“If the Supreme Court rules 5-to-4 in favor of obvious Republican partisan interests in these two cases by allowing extreme partisan gerrymandering and allowing the dubious citizenship question in the Census, the Court will dangerously undermine its legitimacy and credibility for many years to come.”

The Supreme Court is facing a critical test. There are two cases expected to be decided next week that will have enormous consequences for the Court’s long-term credibility.

The cases involve a challenge to the constitutionality of extreme partisan gerrymandering and a challenge to the Trump Administration’s efforts to add a question on citizenship to the Census. Each challenge was upheld by the lower courts.

Republicans during the past decade have engaged in extreme partisan gerrymandering to elect Republican state legislators in greatly disproportionate numbers to the number of votes their party received in their state elections. It is widely understood that the chief beneficiaries of extreme partisan gerrymandering have been, for the most part, Republicans.

The effort to place a citizenship question on the ballot is also widely understood as benefiting Republicans by reducing the count in the Census of minorities and, thereby, benefiting Republicans in redistricting. This will also impact the distribution of federal funds to the disadvantage of blue states where most minorities live.

Information has recently surfaced indicating that the Administration’s alleged reason for adding the citizenship question was false and that the real purpose was to advantage Republicans in redistricting.

The question of whether we have a conservative Supreme Court or a partisan Republican Court has been with us since the Supreme Court issued its controversial decision in Gore v. Bush by a 5-to-4 vote in favor of Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush.

If the Supreme Court rules 5-to-4 in favor of obvious Republican partisan interests in these two cases by allowing extreme partisan gerrymandering and allowing the dubious citizenship question in the Census, the Court will dangerously undermine its legitimacy and credibility for many years to come.

For many, if not most, Americans, the Supreme Court will instead become a Republican-controlled Supreme Court.

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Fred Wertheimer is the Founder and President of Democracy 21, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to strengthen our democracy and ensure the integrity and fairness of government decisions and elections. See previous Notes from Fred here.