Supreme Court Refuses Emergency Request to Stop California’s Democrat-Friendly Congressional Map
It’s not a surprise, though, because SCOTUS did the same thing regarding Texas’s new Congressional district map.
The Supreme Court refused to issue an emergency request to stop California from using its new Democrat-friendly Congressional map.
JUST IN – U.S. Supreme Court will not take up challenge to Governor Newsom's redistricting efforts in California — Politico pic.twitter.com/J4PcQFDmNj
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) February 4, 2026
It’s not a surprise, though, because SCOTUS did the same thing regarding Texas’s new Congressional district map.
The California Republican Party sued Gov. Gavin Newsom over the map in the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California.
California voters overwhelmingly approved Prop 50, which will allow the Democrat-led legislature to redraw five Congressional districts.
The districts will flip to Democrats.
The coalition claims Prop 50 is unconstitutional.
“Specifically, the California Legislature violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution when it drew new congressional district lines based on race, specifically to favor Hispanic voters, without cause or evidence to justify it,” they argued.
The Republicans reminded everyone that the Court said basing districts on race contradicts the meaning behind the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments: race does not matter.
Like Texas, the case is not over. Both cases will likely reach SCOTUS after they go through the courts.
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there is a mathematical solution but jus tlike the fair flat tax
the pols dont want it and the citizens are too ignorant to do it
Is you mathematical solution to maximize compactness? That’s the best I’ve come up with (for reference, a simple measure of compactness is to take the perimeter of a shape, divide by the area, and multiply by the radius of a circle with equivalent area. Perfect score – a circle, is 2, higher the more the shape distorts.) Anyway, that’s a minimization problem, rather than a solution, and typically conflicts with commands to group communities and/or follow natural borders.
I’ll admit that I still tend to favor such a solution, though I see no practical path to get a state to adopt it. But since you’d mentioned a mathematical solution, I’d like more details – hoping you’ve got a new one I haven’t considered.
correct………
any issues with “following natural borders” is solvable you just legislate which direction the “left out” area goes to
so either a clockwise move or counter clockwise
Compactness isn’t the issue. There are many ways to gerrymander. The problem is single member districts, which Congress requires.
This will only increase across the country as exodus from blue states occurs.
As conservatives become easier to marginalize in blue states- they will be gerrymandered out of existence, so the House will be just like the electoral college- all or none.
Red states need to be doing the same.
Hopefully getting rid of illegals and the ultimately population decline minimizes the effect of blue states choking out the “representativeness” of the “Representative Republic”
For now. Gerrymandering works in the short term, but fails in the longer term. Partisanship changes over time.
this is all shaping up to be another version of
blue vs grey
But where will the mason -dixon line be drawn this time??
This no decision is wrong, Sparkle Beach basically announced he was gerrymandering to get rid of Republican representation. The fact he announced what normally is left unsaid should have resulted in a decision banning it. It didn’t. That is wrong.
You have it exactly backwards. If the map was drawn with the only purpose of electing more Democrats and fewer Republicans then it’s completely valid and lawful, and there are no grounds to challenge it.
The entire basis of the Republican challenge here was the remarks by the person who was hired to draw the map, that he aimed to create an advantage for Hispanic voters and give them more power. And that is unconstitutional (with some weird and illogical exceptions, which is a whole nother issue).
The Democrat challenge to the TX map, which SCOTUS also dismissed, made the same allegation. The only real difference between the two cases is that the GOP allegation in CA seems at least somewhat supported by the evidence, while the Dem allegation in TX doesn’t.
The real difference Milhouse is that, in the Texas case, there was no evidence of a racial target and no direct evidence of racial motive at all. In California, you couldn’t move without tripping over evidence of improper racial motivations and targets.
Concise, that is an exaggeration on both sides. There was some evidence of racial motivation in the CA case, but not that much.
In TX there’s no dispute that race was a factor in the process. A district had been drawn with improper racial motives and that was now undone. The Dems claim was that being conscious of race at all makes it invalid, and that’s just not the case. Undoing a racial gerrymander is not the same as creating one!
Fwiw ( with the caveat that I am not fully up to speed and some of my commentary on the facts could be wrong – if so, my apologies)
A – California has (had) some state constitutional provision that limited the ability to gerrymander (possibly bi-partisan commission – though I dont recall the exact provision).
B – Texas – various Trump administration told the Texas senate to adjust the districts and remove those districts with dual minorities. However, the final result was districts far less gerrymandered, which did not follow the trump administration “instructions”. The new districts were also in closer in compliance with a prior CA5 case dealing with the gerrymandering of districts in LA / around new orleans.
Based on my recollection of the issues, the Texas redistricting was good, while the CA redistricting should not be allowed since it didnt follow the CA state constitution.
Again – its my recollection. If I got facts wrong, then address those errors.
That may be true and the actions of the democrats in California may be objectionable for many reasons, but the federal complaint raised only US constitutional claims related to racial gerrymandering.
CA had such a provision. They held a referendum to amend the constitution and allow a (non-racial) gerrymander. The GOP of course can’t argue against that. What they’re arguing is that the actual map the Dems put in place was racially gerrymandered after all. There’s some evidence for that. Not overwhelming, but enough to make a plausible case.
In TX the Dems claim that it’s a racial gerrymander, but it isn’t. What Harmeet Dhillon’s letter demanded of TX was to erase a racial gerrymander that the courts had previously imposed, so it did that. The Dems implausibly claimed that that itself is invalid, i.e. that erasing a racial gerrymander constitutes racial gerrymandering!
Milhouse – again I am speaking from memory so my comment could be wrong. CA as I recall, had a CA constitutiona provision to require bi-partisan committee to draw congressional districts. – My recollection is the procedure (referendom?) to change that was implemented improperly ( again with the caveat that I am dealing from memory and not based a better level of actual analysis).
Regarding the Texas redistricting, the new maps were less racial gerrmandered and in better compliance with the CA5 case regarding the districts around new orleans. One unfortunate aspect of the CRA is that it almost requires racial gerrymandering – at least to some extent.
Incorrect. Sparkle Beach Ken repeatedly said it was in response to Texas and they were going to redraw the map to favor Dems and offset the Texas Republican pick ups
That’s what Newsome said, and if true that would be completely legal and aboveboard. There could be no challenge in such a case.
The basis of the GOP challenge to the CA redistricting was that the mapmaker specifically said his purpose, or part of his purpose, was to maximize the Hispanic vote in a particular pair of districts. The question before the court was how much weight to put on that statement.
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