Blame for the partisan showdown over Texas redistricting was laid at the feet of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts by a longtime legal observer.
Democratic legislators took refuge in Illinois to deprive Republicans of a quorum to ram through a congressional redistricting plan that would give the GOP a massive election advantage, and CNN judicial correspondent Joan Biskupic said the standoff is the result of a 5-4 opinion authored by the chief justice declaring that federal judges cannot review partisan gerrymanders.
“The brazen partisan redistricting underway in Texas, with Republicans attempting to entrench themselves in office and Democrats weighing a counter-offensive in blue states, was greenlit by the U.S. Supreme Court six years ago,” Biskupic wrote.
“Roberts’ opinion reversed cases that would have allowed such districts – drawn to advantage one political party over another irrespective of voters’ interests – to be challenged as violations of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech and association and the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.”
Dissenting justices warned the decision in Rucho v. Common Cause would imperil free and fair elections, and Biskupic said that decision was just as profound as the court’s ruling in last year’s Trump v. United States immunity case.
“The Supreme Court gave Trump immunity. He’s using it as a blank check,” Biksupic wrote. “Roberts may have failed to foresee the consequences in 2019 and then in 2024. Or, alternatively, perhaps he understood and simply believed the effects were not properly the concern of the federal judiciary.”
Roberts acknowledged the apparent unfairness of gerrymandered districts, but he also wrote that the solution did not lie with the federal judiciary, arguing that judges had no constitutional authority to oversee the politics of redistricting – a ruling that gave Trump a green light to meddle in next year’s midterm elections.
“The current redistricting controversy arises from Trump’s pressure on fellow Republicans to generate as many GOP-controlled districts as possible before the 2026 midterm elections for the US House of Representatives,” Biskupic wrote. “The audacious Texas effort has prompted liberals to consider a counterattack in Democratic-controlled states such as California to create new maps that could boost their numbers.”
Justice Elena Kagan predicted this chaotic outcome in her dissent, in which she was joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who remains on the bench, and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in 2020, and Stephen Breyer, who retired in 2022.
“Echoing a line from redistricting precedent that appears apt as Texas legislators divide voters for predetermined results, Kagan wrote that a core principle of government is ‘that the voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around,’” Biskupic wrote.