White Man's Privilege (the John Roberts Version)

Precisely this much of this opinion is of interest to me (for our purposes):

I. INTRODUCTION

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

—Chief Justice John Roberts

The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics. To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map. Here’s why.

Earlier this year, President Trump began urging Texas to redraw its U.S. House map to create five additional Republican seats. Lawmakers reportedly met that request to redistrict on purely partisan grounds with apprehension. When the Governor announced his intent to call a special legislative session, he didn’t even place redistricting on the legislative agenda. 

But when the Trump Administration reframed its request as a demand to redistrict congressional seats based on their racial makeup, Texas lawmakers immediately jumped on board. On July 7, Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice (“DOJ”), sent a letter (“the DOJ Letter”) to the Governor and Attorney General of Texas making the legally incorrect assertion that four congressional districts in Texas were “unconstitutional” because they were “coalition districts”—majority-non-White districts in which no single racial group constituted a 50% majority. In the letter, DOJ threatened legal action if Texas didn’t immediately dismantle and redraw these districts—a threat based entirely on their racial makeup. Notably, the DOJ Letter targeted only majority-non-White districts. Any mention of majority-White Democrat districts—which DOJ presumably would have also targeted if its aims were partisan rather than racial—was conspicuously absent.

Two days later, citing the DOJ Letter, the Governor added redistricting to the special session’s legislative agenda. In doing so, the Governor explicitly directed the Legislature to draw a new U.S. House map to resolve DOJ’s concerns. In other words, the Governor explicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict based on race. In press appearances, the Governor plainly and expressly disavowed any partisan objective and instead repeatedly stated that his goal was to eliminate coalition districts and create new majority-Hispanic districts.

The Legislature adopted those racial objectives. The redistricting bill’s sponsors made numerous statements suggesting that they had intentionally manipulated the districts’ lines to create more majority-Hispanic and majority-Black districts. The bill’s sponsors’ statements suggest they adopted those changes because such a map would be an easier sell than a purely partisan one. The Speaker of the House also issued a press release celebrating that the bill satisfactorily addressed DOJ’s “concerns.” Other high-ranking legislators stated in media interviews that the Legislature had redistricted not for the political goal of appeasing President Trump nor of gaining five Republican U.S. House seats, but to achieve DOJ’s racial goal of eliminating coalition districts.

The map ultimately passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor—the 2025 Map—achieved all but one of the racial objectives that DOJ demanded. The Legislature dismantled and left unrecognizable not only all of the districts DOJ identified in the letter, but also several other “coalition districts” around the State.

For these and other reasons, the Plaintiff Groups are likely to prove at trial that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map. So, we preliminarily enjoin Texas’s 2025 Map. 

The previous post was right:  this is Keystone Kops stuff.  I'm not going to bother with the legal reasoning.  In fact, I'm sure the Sinister Six will stay this injunction on the shadow docket.  Although that seems ill advised to me, since the shadow docket means (these days) the Court hasn't considered the arguments of both sides or likely reviewed the Memorandum Opinion of the three judge panel.  As the opinion says, this is not a final ruling.  There is still a trial to conduct.  Many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip, and all that.  Trials do mean something.  This is a preliminary order, not a final one.  Not that the Sinister Six have shown any interest in such matters when Trump is concerned (although this time it's only tangentially).  Staying the injunction until there is a final judgment only confuses the matter, especially with only a year until the mid-terms.  Voters need to know what district they are in, the SOS of Texas needs to print the correct ballots, etc.  It's a bit flimsy to stay this matter in December (practically) and then have to wait until the trial to take briefs and hear oral arguments (sometime in the summer, most likely; or late spring).  Better to leave it all alone until after the midterms, so as not to introduce chaos where no more is needed.  The old maps are a known quantity; the new ones are now in doubt.  Return to this later, in a timely manner.

Yeah.  Like that's gonna happen.  Might as well expect Santa to bring me that mint condition MGB I've been waiting 50 years for.  (I'm getting old, the filters are going.)

I do appreciate (that's why I included it) the quote from Roberts.  It's what makes this, IMHL (and poorly informed on that count) O, a horse of a different color.  Change the facts, change the outcome.  And the facts are:  these were racially gerrymandered districts, as ordered from the top down.  Everybody involved in this clusterfuck was working on that basis.  It cannot be gainsaid, especially since the trial court is the finder of fact, and these are the facts they have found at this time.  That doesn't make this ruling absolute and ironclad and bulletproof; but it does mean the Supremes have no grounds to freeze it, other than "We're the Supreme Court, bitches!"  And yes, there's a history of that.

Even the Roberts Court has been loathe to overturn the established constitutional doctrine that racial animus is a pernicious influence that cannot be abided by the law.  It's the reason racial covenants in deeds cannot be enforced by the courts (who else is gonna do it?).  They really don't want to unravel that particular tapestry.  So rejecting hte reasoning of the three judge panel (well, two of them, actually) is really not a simple matter disposable by a shadow docket entry.

Or it shouldn't be.

In the meantime:  sweet heaven, but the rot is trickling all the way down to the state legislatures.  This is pernicious on a whole other level.