Afternoon round-up: Today’s oral argument in partisan gerrymandering cases
on Mar 26, 2019 at 5:44 pm
Today the Supreme Court heard oral argument in two cases, Lamone v. Benisek and Rucho v. Common Cause, which challenge the constitutionality of election maps in Maryland and North Carolina, respectively. The justices are being asked whether the states went too far in favoring one political party over the other when drawing their election maps. Amy Howe has this blog’s analysis, which was first published at Howe on the Court. She writes that after two hours of argument, “there were clear divides among some of the justices, but it was much less clear how the court is likely to rule.”
Additional early coverage comes from Richard Wolf of USA Today, Bill Mears of Fox News, Andrew Chung and Lawrence Hurley of Reuters, Greg Stohr and Kimberly Robinson of Bloomberg; Adam Liptak of the New York Times; Melissa Quinn for The Washington Examiner, Mark Sherman of the Associated Press; David Savage of The Los Angeles Times; and Robert Barnes of The Washington Post, while more coverage from The Post comes from Jennifer Barrios, who wrote about Governor Larry Hogan (R-Md.) and former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) advocating against gerrymandering outside the court.
Early commentary comes from Rick Hasen for the Election Law Blog, Bill Blum for The Progressive, Ari Berman for Mother Jones, Mark Joseph Stern for Slate; and Ruthann Robson for the Constitutional Law Prof Blog.
