Louisiana v. Calais

In its decision in Louisiana v. Calais, just released today, the US Supreme Court struck down, as an illegal racial gerrymander, Louisiana’s SB8 voter-redistricting plan, which tried to establish two majority-Black districts out of five total, for the roughly one-third of Louisiana’s population that is Black.

In its decision, the Court’s majority (of six) relied on two key rulings from prior decisions. First, partisan gerrymandering is legal; at least the courts can’t (or won’t) do anything about it. Second, apparently racial gerrymandering is illegal unless challengers can demonstrate that it had a partisan purpose, i.e., unless it can be explained as an attempt to provide partisan, rather than solely racial, advantage.

In other words, unless all other ways of redistricting for partisan advantage provide less racial advantage, the plan cannot survive legal scrutiny.

Think about that logic. If all are roughly equal in population, two out of five districts include 40% of the state’s population. Putting the 33% (one-third) of all voters that are Black in a position to control those districts boosts their political power from 33% to 40%, or about 21%.

But in order to do that legally, you would have to show that every other way of drawing districts for partisan advantage has less impact on race. In order to do that you would have to know, in detail, not only the general correlation between race and party, but the details down to where each registered voter lives and his or her race and party affiliation. Then you would have to use those data to find the gerrymander map that produces the absolute most partisan advantage and select it.

But if you could do all that, wouldn’t the easiest approach be simply to redistrict straightaway for the absolute most partisan advantage possible and avoid the “middleman” of race? Isn’t the whole import of Louisiana v. Calais to put partisan gerrymandering into hyperdrive, with the aid of modern computer data and AI?

Don’t you wish the Supremes—especially the current so-called “conservative” majority—had a little more training in math and mathematical logic and a little more common sense? I sure do.

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