U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Nino Edition

oops!

Ugh

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/over-liberals-objections-supreme-court-says-texas-need-not-draw-new-districts-now/2017/09/12/c6287b0c-981c-11e7-82e4-f1076f6d6152_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_travelban704pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.c015223cac41

Over the objections of four liberal justices, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday night that Texas does not immediately have to redraw electoral districts that a lower court found diminished the influence of minority voters.

The 5-to-4 ruling almost surely means the 2018 midterm elections will be conducted in the disputed congressional and legislative districts.

The justices gave no reasons in their one-paragraph statement granting a request from Texas that it not be forced to draw new districts until the Supreme Court reviewed the lower court’s decision.

But the court’s liberals — Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — signaled their unhappiness by noting they would not have agreed to Texas’s request.

This looks grim.

Unfortunately, most Democrats simply don’t recognize unions as the critical players that they are in the Party. That goes all the way up to people such as Bill Clinton and even Barack Obama. The former completely distanced himself from unions, as had Jimmy Carter, and signed legislation such as NAFTA over their objections, going far to undermine the private sector unions. Obama was marginally pro-union but completely embraced unionbusting charter education charlatans such as Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan and never let that go. His administration did some good work in this second term, thanks in no small part to people such as Tom Perez as Secretary of Labor and David Weil, who headed the Wages and Hours Division. But this was not nearly enough to stem the tide against unions.

Unions thought they got a break when Antonin Scalia died. When he died, the previous challenge to public sector fair share was decided 4-4 and kicked back to the lower court. The went all in for Hillary Clinton, knowing that a Democratic president would keep them alive. Hillary Clinton embraced public sector unionism, particularly the teachers’ unions, in a way her husband or Obama would not. The left, or at least parts of the online left, which is not the same thing, loudly proclaimed that telling them they needed to vote for Hillary in the general election because of the open SCOTUS seat was “blackmail.” This, to say the least, was stupid, although one can legitimately argue that it did not pull many voters away from Clinton. And Janus is the result.

There is no way that unions win this. It was largely believed that if any of the five conservative justices were going to vote for unions in Friedrichs, it would be Scalia. We will never know, but his hostile questioning in the oral arguments made it seem awfully unlikely. Neil Gorsuch is a right-wing extremist speaking at Trump hotel property to a Koch Brothers group today. We know how he is going to vote. We know how Kennedy and Roberts are going to vote too since they already voted to destroy the public sector.

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2017/09/janus-v-afscme-council-no-31

yeah this is dead, will cripple the unions financially

i have totally not been up to speed on this

am i reading it wrong or is this decision going to be the most far-reaching and long-lasting damage to American workers' rights in decades

probably. It's going to push Dem fundraising more to a combo of big corporate/megadonor + small online donations as well

Democrats have been saying "Unions do some good things; at the same time" for decades now. Slowly digging their own graves.

Chewing and swallowing the hand that feeds

i'm required to pay fair-share public union dues - extracted from my pay whether i want to or not, with a choice to pay a full share to get voting rights - for one of my jobs, and i would have a hard time choosing to pay if i suddenly had the option not to pay at all. the marginal utility of the money is too high given how little i earn. the existence of my union is a clear net positive for my industry in my state - go one over, and pay and working conditions are way worse - but i'm a second-class citizen in my union because of my job classification, and the full members have been advocating more for their interests than for employees like me (if they could even really be said to have any leverage to improve anything for employees like me). that blog notes that a decline in membership and part-membership will come from 'members angry at the union for something that happened 15 years ago, members who are cheap and don’t mind freeloading', but i don't actually think it would be freeloading not to pay in to a scheme whose equities fall mainly to a group i don't belong to.

really? what kind of contract has the union secured for you? does it really confer no benefits versus the terms that would be chosen by the employer if they had their druthers?

Wait till you have no more union contract at all and see why the marginal utility of the money cut from your pay is.

well, there may be some protections in there that do not routinely come up, but i think it's basically pay, since i have no other benefits, only a semester-to-semester contract, etc. pay is not significantly higher than most un-unionized similar jobs in the area, though there are some un-unionized employers who pay well under that, which suggests that other jobs could revert to that level if the controlling influence of the union on pay in the region were to disappear.

through the logic of the contract, i'm entitled to pay at a higher rate if my amount of work exceeds a set level, but i'm informed that there was a big fight in the union in the 90s about whether setting it up that way (some kind of concession in exchange for something else the first-class employees wanted) would be exploited by management by just refusing ever to employ anyone in second-class jobs beyond the magic level. sure enough, that's what management did, so that the cap on the pay/amount of work is effectively written into the union contract.

in other words, the first-class employees authored, via bargaining, the conditions under which second-class employees have been constrained ever since. i don't think they will ever seek to change it. they've accepted a tiering system basically like auto worker or steel worker unions or whatever have done.

there are two separate unions in my state for different classes of institution, and the union that i'm not in has a much more equitable contract, with almost all employees beyond a minimum workload receiving prorated pay and benefits eligibility based on a single scale of experience and qualifications. i would pay to stay in that union.

not having yr contract in front of me i can only take yr word for it i guess. we're in the midst of a long long fight for our first contract and my god do we need it. lotta dollar and cents stuff, lotta intangibles (grievance procedure for sexual harassment being the big one) and just like general safety and background conditions and stuff. so i do come in with my own biases n stuff.

HERE WE GO

The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on Tuesday in a case that could reshape American democracy. The justices will consider whether extreme partisan gerrymandering — the drawing of voting districts to give lopsided advantages to the party in power — violates the Constitution.

The Supreme Court has never struck down an election map on the ground that it was drawn to make sure one political party wins an outsize number of seats. The court has, however, left open the possibility that some kinds of political gamesmanship in redistricting may be too extreme.

The problem, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in a 2004 concurrence, is that no one has devised “a workable standard” to decide when the political gerrymandering has crossed a constitutional line.

The case, Gill v. Whitford, No. 16-1161, started when Republicans gained complete control of Wisconsin’s government in 2010 for the first time in more than 40 years. It was a redistricting year, and lawmakers promptly drew a map for the State Assembly that helped Republicans convert very close statewide vote totals into lopsided legislative majorities.

Cool, Gorsuch finally gets to realize his treasured dream of killing off democracy once and for all.

no one has devised “a workable standard” to decide when the political gerrymandering has crossed a constitutional line.

The counter-argument in my view is that, given the rip-roaring success of Wisconsin's computer-generated gerrymandering, the only alternative to creating some sort of vaguely 'unworkable standard' to prevent this happening again would be that subsequent redistricting plans during 2020 will freeze the political landscape in all 50 states so solidly that no state legislature will ever change party composition again.

Isn't the efficiency metric a workable standard?

Sometimes I hate Kennedy more than Alito or Roberts.

It's like he has his head up his ass so he can really consider both cheeks.

Gorsuch is the worst

Under the maps, Republicans won 60 of the 99 seats in the state Assembly with 48.6 percent of the two-party vote in 2012 and 63 of the 99 seats with 52 percent of the vote in 2014....

But the justices seemed skeptical of whether the “efficiency gap” solution the challengers have come up with is the right one.

“Gerrymandering is distasteful, but if we are going to impose a standard on the courts it's going to have to be manageable and concrete,” Justice Samuel Alito said.

The efficiency gap is calculated by taking one party’s total wasted votes in an election, subtracting the other party’s total wasted votes, and then dividing that by the total number of votes cast.

Alito questioned whether the theory has been sufficiently tested.

The state of Wisconsin claims a ruling affirming the lower court’s decision could lead a third of all maps drawn in the last 45 years to be challenged.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, meanwhile, seemed to suggest that the consequences of partisan gerrymandering are too great for the court not to act.

If the results of election are pre-ordained in most districts, she said "what becomes of the precious right to vote?"

The court's newest justice Neil Gorsuch, however, seemed unconvinced that the court even has jurisdiction to resolve the issue of partisan gerrymandering. The text of the Constitution, he said, indicates it is a matter for Congress to resolve.

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/353616-justices-weigh-partisan-gerrymandering-in-potential-landmark-case

this seemed encouraging to me:

"The deciding vote will probably be cast by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, and lawyers for challengers of the plan had to be happy with what they heard from him at the hour-long oral argument.

He gave a hard time to those defending Wisconsin’s 2011 redistricting plan, which has been criticized as one of the most extreme versions of partisan gerrymandering in the country. He asked no questions of the challengers’ lawyers

He pressed the state’s lawyers about whether it would be unconstitutional for the state to simply declare that it was going to favor one party over another. They reluctantly answered that it would, but denied this challenge fit that framework."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-takes-up-wisconsin-as-first-test-in-partisan-gerrymandering-claims/2017/10/03/4349b5de-a82a-11e7-b3aa-c0e2e1d41e38_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-low_court-810am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.a846d8a42b07

He pressed the state’s lawyers about whether it would be unconstitutional for the state to simply declare that it was going to favor one party over another. They reluctantly answered that it would...

This is a big fecking clue. At least four justices will completely ignore it.

Gerrymandering is distasteful

Calm down, Sam, you're being too political

"Gerrymandering is distasteful, but" would be a great title for his memoirs

I'm worried Kennedy goes down this first amendment rabbit hole and we have to do this all again with a new test case that satisfies his moving goalposts vision of what is 'bad' gerrymandering.

I'm worried Kennedy goes down this first amendment rabbit hole and we have to do this all again with a new test case that satisfies his moving goalposts vision of what is 'bad' gerrymandering.

Nice to know that Gorsuch is already acting like a know-it-all imperious dick for his first important case.

That's why he got the job, right?

tbf, he was intended to replace scalia

If the robe fits...

NPR was hawking some SCALIA SPEAKS book in an ad the other day. Fuck that whole family.

Looking forward to Gorsuch dying in a hunting accident

maybe a double-suicide with Clarence

I'm worried Kennedy goes down this first amendment rabbit hole and we have to do this all again with a new test case that satisfies his moving goalposts vision of what is 'bad' gerrymandering.

― officer sonny bonds, lytton pd (mayor jingleberries), Tuesday, 3 October 2017 19:10 (one hour ago) Permalink

Is there a first amendment issue in the case?

There isn't but Kennedy was speculating if maybe there is. I'll admit I dont know enough about the details to avoid confusing the issue even further ..

Kennedy was the first justice to ask a question in Tuesday’s opening arguments in the case, Gill v. Whitford. “Suppose the Court…decided that this is a First Amendment issue?” Kennedy asked Wisconsin’s solicitor general, implying that extreme partisan gerrymandering could violate the right to free speech by preventing those in the minority—in this case Wisconsin Democrats denied representation—from having an equal say in the political process.

Kennedy also seemed to suggest that the court could set a standard for when gerrymandering crosses a line. When Erin Murphy, who argued in favor of the Wisconsin Legislature, argued that state Democrats “have not come up with a workable standard to determine when a map is too political,” Kennedy responded that a manageable standard could be whether a map was drawn with the “overriding concern
” to “have a maximum number of votes for party X or party Y.” He asked whether such a scenario would violate the First Amendment or the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/anthony-kennedys-questioning-suggests-extreme-partisan-gerrymandering-could-be-in-danger/

OIC. That's weird, I don't think that works. But his other questions are encouraging.

Kennedy also seemed to suggest that the court could set a standard for when gerrymandering crosses a line.

"For example, when a congressional district crosses a state line."

‪ https://www.propublica.org/article/supreme-court-errors-are-not-hard-to-find‬

Factual errors found in recent Supreme Court cases including erroneous data used by Roberts re voting registration rates among blacks and whites in 6 southern states in Shelby County case . Roberts & majority struck down part of the Coting Rights Act in this case.

In all, ProPublica found seven errors in a modest sampling of Supreme Court opinions written from 2011 through 2015. In some cases, the errors were introduced by individual justices apparently doing their own research.

these weren't errors, they were lies.

One of the many ugly products of ideologically-driven mostly-conservative think tanks is the wide availability of 'studies' and 'papers' full of purportedly accurate statistics that have never been properly peer-reviewed. There's a lot of legitimate appearing shite out there with deeply skewed or fabricated data. The data stream is so polluted that it is no wonder that garbage data has made its way into jurisprudence, too.

The biggest and most consequential errors pointed out in articles were in immigration cases. In those cases (kim, nken) the Bush era DOJ straight up lied to the Court, and the Court straight up regurgitated the lies, and their opinions turned heavily on those lies. Dark stuff.

Apparently Gorsuch is not liked by libs and conservative justices, Nina Totenberg says.

Totenberg, a renowned court reporter who is friendly with several justices, noted that Gorsuch “ticks off some members of the court—and I don’t think it’s just the liberals.” Without exposing her sources—“you talk to former law clerks, you talk to friends, you talk to some of the justices”—Totenberg then dropped a bombshell:

"My surmise, from what I’m hearing, is that Justice [Elena] Kagan really has taken [Gorsuch] on in conference. And that it’s a pretty tough battle and it’s going to get tougher. And she is about as tough as they come, and I am not sure he’s as tough—or dare I say it, maybe not as smart. I always thought he was very smart, but he has a tin ear somehow, and he doesn’t seem to bring anything new to the conversation."

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/10/why_rumors_of_a_gorsuch_kagan_supreme_court_clash_are_such_a_bombshell.html

Ooh I can't wait to forward this to my wife

Yup. He strikes me as a classic mediocre white prep school guy.

He's the "yeah, I said it guy" -- the guy who was "edgy" because, among a mostly conservative to moderate liberal crowd, he was the one who was a little more open and direct about his conservative ideology. Faced few real challenges to his understanding or comfort in the world.

He's like the dickish right wing strawmen who would show up on the West Wing from time to time

He strikes me as a classic mediocre white prep school guy.

I think what has impressed his conservative colleagues most is not his brilliance, but his absolutism, which in low-light can sometimes be taken for brilliance. He also carries himself like a man convinced of his intellectual perfection and this, too, impresses some people.

I felt that way about Scalia sometimes, but Scalia is Wittgenstein next to him.