pacobird wrote:Anyway, it could mean a variety of things, ranging from good to extremely good. On the merely "good" end, it's just affirming the lower court, saying that race cannot be a primary factor in redistricting without triggering strict scrutiny. The "extremely good" (or at least really disrupting) take is the interpretation that redistricting based on party politics cannot use race as a factor at all without triggering strict scrutiny. Given than African Americans are a 90/10 split in favor of Democrats, no party-based redistricting is going to happen in any state African American people live in any significant number without considering race, meaning this decision effectively kills gerrymandering.
No such luck. SCOTUS ruled today that partisan gerrymandering is not a matter for the federal courts. I haven't read the ruling or much analysis so I'm not sure what its effect will be on future racial gerrymandering cases, but knowing this Court I suspect that unless there's clear evidence of intentional racial motivation, it's not likely to throw out any more racial gerrymanders.
On the plus side, the citizenship question may not make it onto the census. While the Court ruled that a citizenship question could be permissible, it also ruled (with Roberts as swing justice) that Commerce's existing justification for it doesn't fly, and it's going to have to present a new one.
So the question now is whether Commerce can produce a justification that will survive another challenge, and for all that to happen before the census forms are printed. On the one hand, the Administration is incompetent and poorly organized; on the other, it's very good at racial discrimination. We'll see what happens.