Gerrymandering/Redistricting

“If we can say only legislatures are able to make laws regarding the time, place, manner of elections, and courts don’t have any ability to change or constrain those laws, we’re really looking at a significant change in the balance of power between the three branches of state governments, as well as the level of intervention from federal courts in state lawmaking,” said Suzanne Almeida, redistricting counsel for Common Cause, a nonpartisan nonprofit involved in both the North Carolina and Pennsylvania cases.

"The elimination of state autonomy is inconsistent with the historical practice and the intent of the Election Clause and invites the risk that federal courts will wrongly interpret state law -- a significant risk given the difficulty federal courts have in mastering 50 different States' laws," Allison Riggs, a lawyer for Common Cause, argued in court papers. She said to accept the Republicans' argument "that partisan gerrymandering claims are immune from state constitutional scrutiny by state courts would require this Court to overrule a century of precedent." "It would lead to an unprecedented upheaval of current election law and foreclose any legal relief for voters from extreme legislation, which state courts already found to be undemocratic," Riggs said in an interview.

Allison Riggs, a lawyer representing Common Cause in the litigation, said GOP legislators were now “outrageously” attempting to insert the U.S. Supreme Court into state laws less than three years after the justices ruled state courts could use their own laws to curb partisan gerrymandering. “We are confident this specious attempt to undermine our judiciary will be rejected,” Riggs said in a news release. The U.S. Supreme Court told Common Cause and other litigants to respond to the stay request by Wednesday.

My dream is to live in an inclusive democracy that lives up to its promise. Where everyone has a say in the future for their family and community; where anyone can run for public office; where everyone plays by the same fair rules; and where our government reflects who we are because people vote in high numbers. We must not yield to a cynicism that says we can never improve. Making the dream real means ensuring those who represent us are reflective and responsive to the people—not the wealthy who dominate campaign and lobbyist spending. It means ending voter suppression that silences Black and brown voters; replacing unaccountable secret money in elections with small dollar donor laws that shift power from wealthy special interests to the people; ending racial and partisan gerrymandering by shifting power from politicians to impartial commissions; and preventing election sabotage that would steal power from voters by overturning elections. —Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause

“This is the culmination of a years long effort to maintain the status quo,” John Marion, executive director of the government watchdog group Common Cause Rhode Island, told The Boston Globe. “They did not hide the fact that the goal was to let the incumbents draw the maps as they pleased.”

Annastacia Belladonna-Carrera, executive director of Common Cause Minnesota, said in a statement that the courts fell short of the panel’s goal to keep communities of color intact within districts, citing splits between House districts for Black immigrant communities in the northern suburbs of the Twin Cities and Latino communities in the southwestern suburbs. “Minnesotans don’t want Republican or Democratic maps — we want fair maps that give us a voice in our government, regardless of political party, race, or ethnicity,” she said. “These maps rob Minnesotans of color from having a fair say in our government.”