SCOTUS renders unanimous decision
That’s unusual right there, isn’t it? Here’s the decision:
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled against challengers seeking to change the long-held interpretation of the principle of one person, one vote. Siding with a lower court, the 8-member high court held that total population could be used to draw electoral districts.
The decision for the case, Evenwel v. Abbott, was written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas each filed concurring opinions.
“Appellants have shown no reason for the Court to disturb this longstanding use of total population,” Ginsburg wrote.
The challengers had argued the use of total population — which includes non-citizens, but also children and disenfranchise prisoners — to draw districts was unconstitutional because it diluted the political power of eligible voters.
In this case—unlike other recent cases—the absence of Justice Scalia doesn’t appear to have changed anything.
Nebraska v. Parker was 8-0. The Village of Pender was found to be within the boundaries of the Omaha Indian Reservation even though everyone thought differently for 120 years.
The real interesting case will be the next one wherein it will be decided if people can be excluded from voting on their representatives based upon race. The white people of Pender can’t vote in the Tribal elections and the Tribe wants to tax the people in Pender.
Actually, it looks like the majority or at least plurality of Supreme Court decisions are unanimous. I can’t find a decent time series on this, though. From what I’ve seen, all of the justices have at least a 50% agreement rate.
But the really key cases are political and the court is evenly divided. The Pender case was not political.
“The challengers had argued the use of total population – which includes non-citizens, but also children and disenfranchise prisoners – to draw districts was unconstitutional because it diluted the political power of eligible voters.”
In the cities and coastal states, non-citizens, which includes children and the justly disenfranchised, greatly outnumber the same people in rural regions. That directly and unquestionably dilutes the political power of eligible voters in the rural states. Which directly affects the makeup of the House.
Logically, this ruling cannot be defended upon any other grounds than that of resistance to change. SCOTUS’ rationale reduces to, ‘this is how we’ve always done it and we’re not going to allow reason to change our minds’.
I remember the recent NLRB case, which had political implications, went against the administration 9-0.
Nick,
I would point out that in the Canning case, the liberals may well have joined the majority simply to prevent Scalia’s opinion from being the main one. They were going to lose anyway.
Justice Thomas made an even tighter distinction, and I think an important one. Along the continuum of whether something is forbidden, allowed, required, Thomas noted that the Constitution does not speak. Geoffrey Britain may make his argument to persuade a legislative body, and may prevail, but cannot claim that the Constitution requires it, according to Justice Thomas. The other Justices (if I am understanding this correctly) are agreeing that precedent does not point in this direction. He is stating that it is not even up for disccussion without clearer constitutional expression.
The guys over at Volokh are always my go-to source for SCOTUS stuff.
I finally found a decent listing of Supreme Court decisions, and it’s very visual, and on Wikipedia of all places.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_term_opinions_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States
It looks like some years were more boisterous than others, but there really are a lot of unanimous or near-unanimous opinions.