Nicholas Stephanopoulos
@ProfNickStephan
Followers
3,709
Following
1,828
Media
12
Statuses
1,389
Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law, Harvard Law School. Papers:
Cambridge, MA
Joined March 2011
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
Explore trending content on Musk Viewer
Putin
• 537701 Tweets
Rich Homie Quan
• 338596 Tweets
Venezuela
• 320860 Tweets
Cristiano Ronaldo
• 188518 Tweets
San Marino
• 93567 Tweets
Hunter Biden
• 91977 Tweets
Chiefs
• 91912 Tweets
#السعوديه_اندونيسيا
• 80667 Tweets
900 Goals
• 68070 Tweets
Thug
• 66817 Tweets
Lifestyle
• 64104 Tweets
#TimnasDay
• 63758 Tweets
World Cup
• 57512 Tweets
Ravens
• 57139 Tweets
ESMAD
• 57031 Tweets
كاس العالم
• 39173 Tweets
Liechtenstein
• 37591 Tweets
El Alto
• 34354 Tweets
Russian
• 30100 Tweets
سالم
• 28225 Tweets
Alex Morgan
• 27532 Tweets
مانشيني
• 27313 Tweets
FA DIES IS OUT
• 26975 Tweets
Bolivia
• 26416 Tweets
المنتخب السعودي
• 18892 Tweets
#GHEstreno
• 18645 Tweets
Type of Way
• 16533 Tweets
#الكويت_الاردن
• 16498 Tweets
كريستيانو رونالدو
• 15673 Tweets
علي المنتخب
• 14199 Tweets
woody
• 13889 Tweets
Milk Marie
• 11067 Tweets
Alhamdulillah 1
• 10206 Tweets
اليابان
• 10066 Tweets
Pinned Tweet
My book on alignment as an overarching value for election law is now available for pre-order from OUP! The book will come out in early September.
2
7
30
Wow, a Pfizer booster shot results in 96% efficacy against *infection*, relative to *already double-vaccinated people*, and *during the Delta wave*.
So a booster gives more protection against Delta than the two-shot regimen gave against original covid.
127
1K
5K
Wait, the plaintiffs WON in Milligan?! This is an absolutely stunning development. I'm rubbing my eyes and having trouble believing it. And with Roberts -- the author of Shelby County -- writing the opinion? This is probably the most unexpected outcome in the history of the VRA.
14
99
1K
This trope is common enough that it warrants correcting. The difference between Abrams 2018 and Trump 2020 is that Trump's claims of fraud were all lies. In contrast, Abrams's allegations of voter suppression were far from "unfounded."
11
205
818
As if the author of Shelby County is entitled to lecture anyone about following precedent.
Withering comment from the Chief Justice on the dissenters' treatment of precedent.
125
220
1K
12
115
747
Wow, I didn't see this coming from the Alaska Supreme Court (in a case I had nothing to do with):
"To allow for meaningful judicial review in redistricting cases, we formally adopt Professor Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos’s “community of interest” definition ..."
10
70
734
The brazenness of this decision is something else. The thousands of litigants who have brought Section 2 claims? The thousands of courts who have decided these cases? Somehow they all missed what these two judges, in their infinite wisdom, finally saw.
#BREAKING
: In a 2-1 decision, the 8th Circuit has upheld a lower court ruling that private individuals can't bring lawsuits under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
27
73
243
8
226
691
Can we now identify when Purcell applies and when it doesn't?
Alabama: Jan. 24 decision, May 24 primary, four-month gap, Purcell applies.
Wisconsin: Mar. 3 decision, Aug. 9 primary, five-month gap, Purcell doesn't apply.
32
175
589
I wrote this piece on what's missing from H.R. 1: a *general* provision that can be used to attack *all* voting restrictions -- including ones Congress hasn't thought of yet.
@RepMondaire
has a proposal to do just that. It should be added to the bill.
5
241
538
I wrote this short piece on each congressional chamber's power to judge its members' elections. This power lies dormant today. But it has been used in the past to fight voter suppression, racial discrimination, and corruption. It could do so again!
🚨🆕
@ProfNickStephan
warns that the filibuster could shatter Congress's ability to pass meaningful voting rights reforms. He offers an alternative way for how the House and Senate could help strengthen American democracy—a power distinct from legislation.
21
195
480
8
162
472
So the Court today:
1. Fully endorsed the Gingles framework for racial vote dilution claims.
2. Fully rejected Alabama's argument that a "race-blind benchmark" should replace Gingles.
3. Confirmed that Section 2 applies to districting and is constitutional.
Incredible!
6
62
468
I certainly agree that Republicans are poised to pick up seats, on net, through gerrymandering. But to estimate how many, you've got to consider *all* states, including ones where *Dems* are going to pick up seats (like IL, MD, and NY).
NEW: GOP could take back House in 2022 by picking up 6-13 seats under new gerrymandered maps in GA TX FL NC alone
Dems face redistricting bloodbath if they don’t pass ban on partisan gerrymandering ASAP
You can’t out-organize extreme gerrymandering
459
7K
13K
13
46
333
Democracy reform is popular! Congress should do popular things! (Especially when they're good policy, too.)
🚨 NEW: I partnered with
@DataProgress
to poll the For The People Act and the results were stunning. 67% said they supported the bill, including a majority of Republicans and independents. Only 19 percent (!!) opposed the measure.
14
120
294
4
77
327
My take on Brnovich:
"To return to Alito’s metaphor, this is what a judicial pirate ship looks like. It flies textualist colors while plundering one of the key statutory achievements of American democracy."
5
104
291
If they’ll use it, the Democrats have *complete* power to negate the ISL doctrine with respect to congressional elections. All they have to do is pass a one-sentence bill saying Congress hereby ratifies non-legislative state regulations of congressional elections.
7
75
244
With Trump off Twitter, I think the time has come for me to be on it.
10
7
215
This case is a test of whether the Court will apply Purcell even when its impact would be to benefit Democrats. In other words, is Purcell a real doctrine or just a way to boost Republicans?
🚨NEW: Black intervenors in the Louisiana racial gerrymandering case have asked SCOTUS to pause the order striking down the state's new congressional map pending appeal. Application for stay here:
1
16
46
12
68
223
To put the point more generally: Claims of widespread fraud are almost all lies in modern American politics. Claims of vote suppression, however, are all too grounded in reality.
3
42
218
And what, pray tell, is the plan to out-organize *gerrymandering*? Are voters supposed to move to new districts to uncrack/unpack themselves?
9
54
208
It’s certainly possible — but note that Republicans *didn’t* appeal the equally adverse Ohio Supreme Court ruling.
Maybe this is crazy, but I could see Republicans appealing to SCOTUS, arguing that the state court ruling usurped the power of the state legislature to set the rules for congressional elections in Art. 1 s 4. Would require SCOTUS to overturn Arizona Ind. Redist. case /1
20
49
138
11
28
206
She also chose opposing — and dooming — what would have been the most important electoral reform package in U.S. history.
NEWS- Kyrsten Sinema announces she’s leaving Senate.
“Because I choose civility, understanding, listening, working together to get stuff done, I will leave the Senate at the end of this year. “
710
503
4K
3
46
209
The Ohio congressional map is the worst gerrymander yet proposed this cycle -- more than twice as biased (in the opposite direction) as Illinois's map.
It'll soon be the state courts' job to enforce OH's ban on maps that "unduly favor a political party."
6
84
186
A reminder, as we enter the next redistricting cycle, that *competitive* maps aren't the same as *fair* maps. Empirically, in fact, competitiveness and partisan fairness are entirely unrelated.
2
36
181
In non-Bronovich news, I'm now the Kirkland & Ellis Professor at Harvard Law School. And Harvard Law School now has the country's first election law clinic,
@HLS_ElectionLaw
, headed by the incomparable
@ruthgreenwood
.
Busy day!
4
3
182
PlanScore has just launched its Score a Plan feature.
For the first time ever, data about district maps' partisan effects will be instantly available.
To everyone -- not just party operatives.
For example, here's the scoring page for Wisconsin's awful state house map:
6
57
179
Here's the opinion:
And here's the relevant article of mine (which argues that districts should correspond to territorial communities to hinder gerrymandering):
5
16
181
This is the remedy redistricting violations have always logically required — but that courts have been too timid, until now, to impose. An unlawfully constituted legislature shouldn’t be able to make law (at least not law that depends on that illegal composition).
🚨🚨🚨 North Carolina Supreme Court: racially gerrymandered North Carolina General Assembly, as an unconstitutionally constituted legislature, did not have the power to propose amendments to the North Carolina Constitution.
97
1K
5K
4
38
164
Georgia indeed (among other things) (1) purged thousands of eligible voters from the rolls; (2) prevented thousands of eligible voters from registering to vote; (3) closed hundreds of polling places; and (4) enforced a photo ID requirement for voting.
2
14
149
New Jersey’s county line is stunningly antidemocratic, maybe the most egregious example in modern American politics of party insiders subverting the nomination process. It should be scrapped immediately (an outcome sought by not just Kim’s suit but a couple existing cases, too).
The broken politics in New Jersey needs to end once and for all. Today I am filing suit and seeking an injunction to stop the corrupt county line system for this June 4 primary and to abolish it permanently going forward. 49 states use fair ballots; it’s time NJ does too. THREAD
57
570
3K
2
38
144
Reconciliation can be used (at least) for electoral reforms that have the structure of (1) money to (2) certain recipients who (3) comply with certain criteria.
Note: (2) could be not just states but also voters, election officials, candidates, etc.
6
35
129
That's why Fair Fight's lawsuit against Georgia survived a motion to dismiss -- a hurdle none of Trump's claims of frauds could surmount.
1
12
139
Look, said the frog in the nearly boiling water, it’s not that bad. The temperature is up just a degree or two from 2011.
A few reasons Rs won't gain as many seats from redistricting as initial "sky is falling" predictions on left:
- Many states they control are existing GOP gerrymanders (TX, OH, etc.)
- Blue-trending suburbs constrain their ability to add more seats
- Dems can newly gerrymander NY
83
556
4K
2
20
132
Of note, both
@SeanTrende
and Grofman have written extensively about measures of partisan fairness. They have no excuse for sleepwalking into a gerrymander.
Wow. Election Twitter's own
@SeanTrende
and Bernard Grofman, a UC-Irvine professor who has previously served as a court-appointed special master to redraw VA's lines, will work together to draft VA's next maps.
21
83
520
2
19
133
Democrats don’t need to end the CA commission; they just need to give it one more criterion: ensuring partisan fairness at the *national* level, for the U.S. House *as a whole.*
I'm half surprised there isn't a ballot initiative to end the nonpartisan redistricting commission for California's congressional elections
23
12
248
3
16
129
This is my full written testimony for today's House hearing on Brnovich. I make three main points: First, the Court's new factors are entirely extratextual and so inexplicable as a matter of ordinary statutory interpretation.
3
24
130
This is a good example of one of the biggest problems with American democracy: states doing things their citizens oppose. It’s nearly certain that majorities in these states want mifepristone to be available. Yet here are their elected officials arguing directly to the contrary.
BREAKING: Nearly two dozen states support effort to reverse FDA approval of mifepristone. New, at
@lawdorknews
:
56
261
305
5
60
129
Also missing today: all of Dobbs’s paeans to democracy, to letting the people decide contentious issues. Why will the political process soon be able to regulate abortion but NOT affirmative action?
2.5 hours in. Kagan asks why nobody seems to care about originalism in this case
337
3K
30K
4
24
126
Lani was the most creative scholar of minority representation in election law history. Everyone working in the area toils in her shadow.
Harvard Law School Dean John Manning confirms professor emerita Lani Guinier died peacefully at age 71 this morning. Guinier, an expert in voting rights, was the first woman of color to be hired for a tenured post at the law school. 1/2
64
881
4K
2
24
124
I like the strategy of a separate vote on partisan gerrymandering. That’s a practice almost no opponent of the FTPA has affirmatively defended. It’s also the key reason U.S. democracy is so distorted (other than the unchangeable Senate).
SCOOP: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer expected to force votes on For the People Act and two measures — one to end partisan gerrymandering and one to combat dark money — after $3.5T budget, per sources.
93
2K
8K
4
29
122
This is like one of the classic bad arguments against gerrymandering: If you don't like it, just vote out the gerrymanderers.
The whole point of gerrymandering -- and the county line -- is that they distort election outcomes to protect favored candidates.
The most adorably naive sentence in the
@neal_katyal
and
@smmarrota
brief:
"If the public truly shares the Plaintiffs; dismay for ballot bracketing, then the public could express that will through their elected officials and seek change." 1/2
10
23
92
2
28
122
I'm happy to say that my draft book, "Aligning Election Law," is now under contract with OUP. The book will argue that alignment -- congruence between what the government does and what people want -- should serve as an organizing principle for election law.
8
9
114
This raises a question I’ve wondered about before: If someone can be nominated and confirmed before a vacancy officially arises, why can’t the President and Senate now nominate and confirm successors to *other* Justices, too, ready to take office when those Justices retire?
15
12
116
I wrote a lengthier response to this provocative column arguing that the newly redrawn House districts are much fairer than the districts they replaced.
1. It's simply too soon to tell. 21 states, totaling 194 House seats, haven't enacted new plans yet.
It looks like the new House map will be much less biased towards the GOP than the old one -- and if everything goes exactly right, the final map may even be tilted, ever so slightly, in the Democrats’ favor.
43
239
1K
2
54
108
Also nice to see the Court embracing the logic of my amicus brief with
@cwarshaw
,
@CSElmendorf
, and Jowei Chen. Further shackles on Section 2 are unnecessary because the Court's prior decisions have already sufficiently limited the provision.
1
3
109
I'm quoted in this
@RonBrownstein
piece. The need for congressional intervention would be far less urgent if the Roberts Court hadn't dismantled the VRA, deregulated campaign finance, and refused to fight voter suppression and gerrymandering.
6
48
101
Jackson points out that the state's expert, Sean Trende, basically added nothing to the state's case. So you have just about nothing on the state's side offsetting the plaintiffs' expert analysis.
6
8
101
Making it Twitter-official that
@ruthgreenwood
is now part of the full-time HLS faculty. Hurray!
8
3
103
Jacksonville has agreed to settle our racial gerrymandering suit against the city. This victory is notable in a few respects:
1. This was one of the first racial gerrymandering cases to make use of comparator sets of computer-generated maps.
2
21
101
I'll be live-tweeting this morning's oral argument in Merrill, the Court's (potentially) blockbuster Voting Rights Act case.
1
25
94
If this comes to pass, it would be the fairest national House map since at least the 1990s and possibly the reapportionment revolution of the 1960s.
6
15
92
The three-part test we proposed in Whitford and Rucho strikes again.
Intent. Effect. Causation. Manageable according to almost every judge not named John Roberts.
#ELB
: New Mexico Supreme Court Recognizes Partisan Gerrymandering Claim under State Constitution, Adopting the Standard in Justice Kagan’s Rucho Dissent
0
7
19
1
26
97
This will be the first racial gerrymandering case in SCOTUS relying in part on redistricting simulations. Simulations feature prominently in Milligan -- a Section 2 case -- but are (or should be) more legally relevant in racial gerrymandering disputes.
5
23
88
7. The upshot? We still need Congress to pass the FTVA. True, the FTVA might not have sweeping effects in 2022 relative to the status quo. But near-term impact has never been the rationale for the FTVA. Improving American democracy -- over the long run -- is the bill's goal.
0
20
87
In election law academia, there's a joke that professors shouldn't mention PR too soon because it solves all the problems addressed by the course. Gerrymandered legislatures? Lack of minority representation? Lack of competition? Legislative polarization? PR helps fix them all.
Press Release: House Delegation Unveils Updated Fair Representation Act to Reform Congressional Elections
7
10
33
4
28
89
Harvard Law School is launching an Election Law Clinic whose Director will be
@ruthgreenwood
! I can't wait to see what good trouble the Clinic will cause.
0
10
87
It's a memorable day for democracy in Wisconsin. The great gerrymander of 2011 -- shamefully renewed by the WI supreme court in 2022 -- is finally no more. For the time in years, WI voters will have fair maps that will accurately translate their preferences into representation.
BREAKING: I've promised from the beginning that I will always try to do the right thing. Today, I'm keeping that promise and I'm signing fair maps for Wisconsin.
Wisconsin, for the first time in over a decade, we will not have some of the most gerrymandered maps in America.
380
2K
12K
0
19
85
Other, saner countries don't have "battles" and "wars" over redistricting. A few technocrats redraw the lines using good government criteria. Politicians stay out of it. And the public barely notices that anything has happened.
1
24
79
Election law folks should remember that labor law is just as important for democracy. Strong unions matter as much as no voter suppression and gerrymandering.
So no surprise that Roberts, the architect of the Court’s recent election law cases, also authored Cedar Point.
1
24
72
This story describes a smoking — flaming — gun violation of the Florida Fair Districts Amendment. It’s a testament to the FL Supreme Court’s corruption that no one thinks it’ll do anything about it.
NEW: Earlier this year, Ron DeSantis overruled FL’s GOP-controlled legislature to push through a Congressional map that strongly favored Republicans.
He was secretly aided by GOP-linked national operatives. It may have violated the Florida constitution.
34
520
790
0
47
76
Sotomayor hits on how AL doesn't really believe in respecting communities of interest. AL is happy to fragment the Black Belt -- an African American community of interest -- while preserving other COIs.
1
19
74
I have an idea for an election law joke, but it’s too close to the election for me to tell it.
5
7
75
Yes, the Wisconsin Supreme Court invented a least-change principle out of whole cloth. But it also committed (as it had to) to complying with federal and state law. State law includes explicit compactness and subdivision preservation requirements.
3
17
74
So if the FL Supreme Court flouts FL law, Republicans could aggressively gerrymander the state. But that wouldn't be hardnosed politics to be celebrated. It would be a blatant violation of FL's constitution, which FL's people worked so hard to amend to ban gerrymandering.
Thanks to the FL Supreme Court's hard right turn, Republicans could stretch their current 16R-11D lead in House seats (left) to as wide as 19R-9D (example, right) - erasing most of Dems' current House margin.
213
162
563
3
21
71
I count ~50 citations to Allen v. Milligan. This is why Milligan was such a big deal even though it largely preserved existing Section 2 doctrine. It created a permission structure for lower courts to rule in favor of Section 2 plaintiffs. If John Roberts can do it, so can you.
🚨🚨🚨 BREAKING: A federal court has issued a ruling holding that Georgia's congressional and legislative map violate section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and need to be redrawn by December 8. The 516-page opinion here:
7
160
583
0
17
71
It’s a critical point that any election reform bill should be amended to stop election subversion.
Are there proposals for how best to do this? (And would they apply to federal or to all elections?)
One missed connection here is that HR1/HR4 doesn't do much to address to election subversion. These are reform bills; they just weren't conceived to secure the fundamentals of democracy, and the politics around these bills might be quite a bit different if they were.
7
28
153
2
13
69
AL's only response is that Black *participation* is decent now. But what about the election of Black-preferred candidates? What about responsiveness to the needs and interests of Black voters? Silence from Alabama. But those are crucial VRA values, just as vital as participation.
3
20
71
This never would have happened before this year (and this Court's unprecedented expansion of Purcell). In previous cycles, districts were struck down and redrawn after February of an election year all the time.
Federal court in Georgia rules that the 2022 election will take place using the redistricting plans passed by the GA legislature, saying making changes would be too disruptive to the election. Order here:
20
38
51
2
35
68
I just posted this paper, written for a symposium at Washington & Lee, on the real-world record of instant-runoff voting.
A key question about any voting method is how often it elects the "Condorcet winner," favored by voters over any other candidate.
4
22
68
Lastly, Congress should respond by adding two more paragraphs to Section 2. One listing and rejecting the Court's new factors. The other (per Kagan's dissent) imposing liability when a practice causes a statistically significant and unnecessary racial disparity.
2
5
65
What an odd, unsettling decision in a case I've been watching. A court in Hawaii said it lacked the authority to remedy (what it suggested was) a clear equal protection violation: ex-Hawaiians being allowed to vote if they move *abroad* but *not* if they move to U.S. territories.
2
22
59
My book must be close to publication because now it has a cover! (ETA is late this summer.)
5
0
62
6. Also, state-level gerrymanders are bad even if they add up to reasonable balance at the national level. Good luck telling Democrats in Texas, or Republicans in Illinois, that they should stop complaining because the House map in its entirety isn't too skewed.
1
8
58
I put together these longer thoughts on today's surprise blockbuster.
1. It's stunning that Roberts, the author of Shelby County, wrote this opinion. It's the first time ever the Court has required the creation of another minority opportunity district!
3
3
60
Law school clinics better be thinking about how a likely hostile Supreme Court plays into their litigation strategies. Wins for clients are the goal — not defeats in front of the Court.
0
12
58
5. We care about minority representation, too. And existing minority opportunity districts are being weakened in states like NC and TX, while states like AL and TX are refusing to draw new opportunity districts where they're legally required.
1
8
56
With respect to women's political power, here's a finding from a 2015 paper of mine (). When women and men disagree about an issue, greater female support for a policy change makes it *less* likely the change will occur.
6
28
56
Agreed! Red states are trying to raise the *cost* of voting by passing voting restrictions. In response, Congress could raise the *benefit* of voting through a tax credit or voucher.
5
11
54
4. Furthermore, national partisan fairness isn't the whole story. We also care about competition. And the new districts are squeezing competition out of the system. The number of swing seats has fallen; the number of safe seats has risen.
1
6
52
Michigan already has most of the electoral rules linked to better alignment between public policy and public opinion (like a redistricting commission). Pro-union steps like repealing right-to-work are the critical next step.
Amazing things are afoot in Michigan. Now that Dems control state government, they're:
*Codifying LGBTQ rights
*Protecting election workers
*Repealing right-to-work
*Ensuring union wages in construction
Dems can model an alternative to red state madness:
94
1K
4K
0
15
54
This is an extremely big deal. Proportional representation in one of the country’s larger states. And proof that a quantitative bias threshold can be judicially enforced — even by a conservative-leaning court.
Unfair maps are bad for our democracy. I'm proud to have provided evidence in this case to the Ohio Supreme Court showing that the proportion of state legislative districts favoring each party did not correspond closely to the statewide preferences of the voters of Ohio.
9
19
219
0
12
53
A centrist third party could certainly work *given a different electoral system*. It's winner-take-all elections -- not Americans' underlying preferences -- that give us two dominant parties.
The No Labels flop confirms what we already know: The idea of a centrist 3rd party sounds good in theory but does not work in practice.
The two political parties in this country are ultra powerful. As is partisanship. People like to say they would love another option but when
36
4
61
10
15
53
Check out this amazing new resource -- RPV Near Me -- that
@ElectionClinic
just launched. The site displays estimates of racial polarization in voting for every county in the country. Such granular RPV data has never been available to the public before.
3
18
52
Second, the Court's factors are driven by ideological opposition to the VRA's mission of ending racial inequities in voting. At every turn, the factors make it harder for VRA plaintiffs to prevail.
1
5
51
I'm listening to the oral argument in Alexander, the racial gerrymandering case out of South Carolina.
2
8
49
And the most important thing to note is that a NY map drawn without partisan intent should *still* have ~22 Democratic seats and ~4 Republican seats. Several of the districts (both Democratic and Republican) should just be more competitive. See .
5
13
47
This . . . sounds promising? Like a talking filibuster is already effectively part of the Senate rules? Letting each Republican senator speak -- once -- for as long as s/he wants seems like a small price to pay for passing the election bill.
2
6
49
I agree with
@rickhasen
. This isn’t a pound of flesh being taken by Manchin — it’s a few ounces. If Manchin’s package becomes law, democracy advocates should be dancing in the streets.
My new one
@Slate
: "Democrats should grab the deal, even though it is not perfect, is still unlikely to pass, and doesn’t yet address the greatest threat in upcoming elections: the danger of election subversion."
36
100
293
2
8
46
2. Based on better data, the redrawn House districts are actually almost identical to -- not much fairer than -- their predecessors. Dems are favored to win about 51% of the new districts. They were previously favored to win about 52% of the old districts--i.e., 1% MORE.
2
6
44
This is an important paper about Dobbs’s empty arguments about democracy. A Court that actually believed in democracy — not rhetorically in this one case — wouldn’t undermine democracy at every turn.
Delighted to announce that “Dobbs and Democracy,” co-authored with the incomparable
@kateashaw1
, is forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review in Spring 2024! We’re so excited to work with the terrific folks
@HarvLRev
to get this piece out into the world!
51
224
2K
4
7
47
I’ll be saying similar things to the House Judiciary Committee on Friday. Stay tuned.
#ELB
: Read My Testimony Before Senate Judiciary Subcommittee for Hearing on Voting Rights After Brnovich and Shelby County (and Link to Livestream of Hearing)
Hearing starts in less than an hour.
2
20
39
1
10
43
I don't agree with
@mattyglesias
's take at all. First, H.R. 1 is *extremely* bold on gerrymandering. It (1) mandates independent commissions that (2) are given specific bias thresholds they can't exceed. This would be the world's most rigorous anti-gerrymandering policy!
1
7
44
Jackson is challenging the ascendant -- but untenable --colorblindness theory of the Equal Protection Clause. As Jackson points out, no good originalist can endorse that theory.
1
14
46
As Kagan points out, this case is a slam dunk under existing precedent. It's only contestable now because this Court is willing -- eager -- to revisit precedent.
1
13
44
The point is that least-change is in conflict the rest of Wisconsin's redistricting requirements, precisely because WI's current districts are so bad. How the court resolves this conflict will determine what kinds of maps WI will have this decade.
3
6
43
Echoes of 2019, when the Court decided the gerrymandering and Census cases on the same day. Those cases were a split decision, allowing the Court to *appear* fair-minded while greenlighting maybe the most undemocratic practice in U.S. politics.
Thursday July 1 is the official first day for the
@HLS_ElectionLaw
Clinic and we will start the day with two democracy opinions from SCOTUS 💥
0
3
38
1
13
45
Pretty much a textbook Section 2 case: It's possible to draw a second majority-Black district. Racial polarization is off the charts. So is racial discrimination. And even a second VRA district doesn't result in proportionality. If this doesn't violate Section 2, nothing does.
#ELB
: Unanimous 3-Judge Federal District Court Holds Alabama Violated Voting Rights Act by Not Creating a Second Majority Black Congressional District
1
7
43
1
11
43
A few thoughts about the John Lewis VRA. On the whole, it's even more ambitious than I expected. Its impact would go far beyond reviving the preclearance regime the Court nullified in Shelby County.
1
6
43
Ukraine is overreacting about the Russian invasion, says Putin.
2
7
42
Weird that Alabama isn't giving a full-throated defense of the colorblindness theory. They probably didn't expect this to be contested terrain.
1
9
43
It's ironic that this is what now passes for good news for the VRA -- the author of Shelby County, not the author of Brnovich, writing the opinion in Milligan.
With Justice Alito writing the Clean Water Act decision handed down today, it now looks all but certain that Chief Justice Roberts has the Voting Rights Act opinion (Allen v. Milligan).
8
32
94
2
4
44
This is redistricting the way it should be done. By experienced, expert commissioners. Relatively quickly (though still with public input). And without endless litigation after the lines are drawn.
This could be our future, too, if we'd only cut politicians out of redistricting.
The redistribution process is complete! We are saying goodbye to this account, and it will no longer be active. Want to keep receiving information about the electoral process? Give
@ElectionsCan_E
a follow.
1
10
65
1
10
42