Gavin Newsoms race-based gerrymander is wicked the Supreme Court must slap it down

Gavin Newsom celebrated last year when Proposition 50 passed, gerrymandering California’s congressional map to favor Democrats.But the new California map should be struck down by the courts for the same reason the US Supreme Court recently blocked Louisiana’s map: Both were drawn using race, in violation of the US Constitution.The Supreme Court doomed the Louisiana congressional map in Louisiana v.

Callais because legislators in Baton Rouge had been explicit: They wanted to create a congressional seat specifically to elect a black representative to Congress.Legislators in Sacramento were even more explicit about their racial purpose.Legislator after legislator spoke openly about their goal of creating “black districts” and “Latino-majority districts.” As in Louisiana, they garbled the Voting Rights Act, saying it mandated “voters of color be placed in districts” to elect racial minorities.The Voting Rights Act does no such thing.

Especially after the Supreme Court struck down the Louisiana congressional map, race can’t play a part in legislative line drawing.In California, over and over and over, legislators boasted about racial retribution for redistricting efforts in Texas and other red states.Assemblyman Isaac Bryan, for one example, complained that a “black voter in Texas is worth one-fifth of the representation of a white voter in Texas.

I did say three-fifths.”All of this racially saturated rhetoric was used to push a congressional map that would wipe out five Republican seats in Congress.Partisanship might have been the outcome, but the intent was to allocate power on the basis of race.

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