Posted on 02/18/2019 7:53:42 AM PST by csvset
A federal court gave final approval Thursday to the redrawn Virginia House of Delegates map that a court-appointed expert created to resolve the state’s long-running racial gerrymandering case.
In a 2-1 opinion, judges for the Richmond-based Eastern District of Virginia ordered the state to adopt the map created by University of California-Irvine political science professor Bernard Grofman. The map could boost Democrats’ chances of taking control of the House later this year by tilting six GOP-held districts toward Democrats and imperiling the re-election campaigns of two top Republicans.
Republicans had called Grofman’s map “legally indefensible,” saying it “attempts to give Democrats an advantage at every turn.”
Judges Barbara Milano Keenan and Arenda Wright Allen rejected that assertion.
“Nothing in the record suggests that Dr. Grofman acted with animus toward any incumbents, or toward any party,” the judges wrote. “We credit Dr. Grofman’s contention that he constructed his proposals without regard to partisan outcome in the non-challenged districts, and that he treated all incumbents equally.”
Republicans are appealing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on March 18. But the GOP was continuing to fight the case in the lower court. Thursday’s order means that battle is now over, and Virginia election officials now have official orders to use the court’s map for the upcoming General Assembly primaries.
“The Department is immediately implementing the remedial maps in conjunction with the affected general registrars,” said Virginia Department of Elections Commissioner Chris Piper.
All 140 seats in the legislature are up for election this year.
Last year, the court ruled that 11 House districts were unconstitutional, finding that lawmakers improperly prioritized race to draw African-American voters into majority-minority districts. The court gave the General Assembly a chance to redraw the map last fall, but it became clear the Republican House and Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam could not agree on a plan.
Grofman’s map changes the lines for 26 districts, moving some of those black voters into neighboring districts held by Republicans.
In the Richmond area, the most significant partisan swing would occur in the district occupied by House Speaker Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights. By removing rural areas and shifting the lines north into the Chesterfield County suburbs closer to Richmond, the speaker’s district would see a Democratic shift equivalent to 32 percentage points under past election results, according to the Virginia Public Access Project.
House Appropriations Chairman Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, would face a similarly large Democratic swing, 27.4 percentage points, under the court’s order.
Judge Robert Payne dissented, writing that because he didn’t find the existing map unconstitutional, he saw “no need for any change to the redistricting plan enacted by the General Assembly.”
In 2015, Grofman was appointed as a special master to redraw Virginia's congressional districts after US federal judges ruled that the previous districts were unconstitutionally gerrymandered to pack one district with African-Americans and dilute their influence through the rest of the state.[1] The US Supreme Court declined to intervene, allowing Grofman's maps to be used.
In 2018, Grofman was again appointed as a special master to redraw the districts for Virginia's House of Delegates.
A college professor from Irvine, California has any business redrawing Virginia’s state legislative districts WHY, exactly?
You know you can trust a UC professor to be non-partisan! (Extreme sarcasm.)
What Democrats can’t win by voter fraud, they win in the courts with Democrat appointed judges.
This is his second go round. Does he get a third try? We will see what the USSC has to say.. or not..
More rule by judicial fiat.
ONE MAN, who doesn’t reside in Virginia, gets to redraw the state’s voting districts? Using what method? If those sections are NOT evenly divided across geography than this is a subversion of state sovereignity and a blatant power grab by democrats.
The order is unconstitutional on its face.
This sounds very similar to what happened in PA!
USSC let us get SCROOOOOD here in Pennsylvania.
Of course that decision was made by a corrupt State Supreme Court. Will they be as hands-off with a Federal ruling?
I guess we are about to find out.
Democrats sure are waging an all-fronts war to seize control.
The criminal, leftist democratic machine guaranteeing a blue state for a long time. My vote has been taken away from me and millions of others.
JoMa
Redistricting is a political process, not a Dr. Grofman process. This is an inherent function of the State Legislature, in this case Virginia’s House of Delegates. If the country wants some professor or some “non-partisan” commission, then a Constitutional Amendment is in order.
The fantasy that some unelected twit can craft a district arrangement that does not deliberately favor one or another political party is preposterous. In this case, a Professor. How will that work out? The answer is + seats for the Democrats.
Odd, isn’t it, that these court rulings never favor Republicans?
How was he put into place ? Why didn’t the R’s, try to work with Northam instead of allowing a leftist from California to re-draw them. Why is the federal govt trying to control Virginia’s elections ? It all stinks.
In the end John Roberts will probably decide that Professor Grofman is a tax, and uphold the redistricting.
How/why do yo think Dave Brat lost? It was redistricting that got him.
Redistricting could be made a non-political process, but this isn’t the way to do it.
Redistricting could simply be the mathematical solution for how to apportion districts evenly while creating the most compact geographical shapes, or in shapes that result in the shortest average travel time to center. No possible partisanship in such a solution, a reproducible, verifiable algorithm could do the work - and what’s more, it would become reasonable to project future changes in districts based on population changes, so it would be a very stable and predictable system that automatically adjusted to changing conditions.
Because Virginia, like other areas are still under reconstruction. Sad, the feds has no business involved in this. They can t stop fraudulent votes though.
Virginia is one of the lowest taxed fiscally responsible states in the USA. That is all about to end.
Which is — of course — the only goal of the 2 scrubama-appointed judges.
I know, plus he ran a poor campaign. It was a close loss. No reason Virginia should have to do this.
But McAuliffe can give thousands of felons the right to vote against the judges orders and not have those names go public. Where are the feds when things like that happen ? They stink like the R’s do. They dont
fight back.
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