The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a request from Republican legislative leaders in Pennsylvania to block the implementation of a redrawn congressional map that creates more parity between the political parties in the state.
The practical impact is the 2018 elections are likely to be held under a map much more favorable to Democrats, who scored an apparent victory last week in a special election in a strongly Republican state district. The 2011 map that has been used this decade has resulted in Republicans consistently winning 13 of the state’s 18 congressional seats.
Monday’s action was the second time that the court declined to get involved in the partisan battle that has roiled Pennsylvania politics. The commonwealth’s highest court earlier this year ruled that a map drawn by Republican leaders in 2011 “clearly, plainly and palpably” violated the free-and-equal-elections clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution.
Understand that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that, under state law, the gerrymandered map did not pass muster. What right does the federal government have to tell Pennsylvania courts what Pennsylvania law says? None, as it turns out. What is peculiar is that Republicans would take such an obviously outlandish position — one that trashes the 10th Amendment and the touchstone of federalism.
The Court’s extended consideration was a bit peculiar.
The U.S. Supreme Court deliberated nearly two weeks before turning down the request to stop the map from being used in this fall’s elections. Generally the justices stay out of the way when a state’s highest court is interpreting its own state constitution.
But perhaps the court was waiting until a federal three-judge panel hearing a separate challenge had ruled. (That court turned down Republicans as well.) Election law guru Rick Hasen speculated that maybe one or more justices “needed more time to consider the issues, and was pondering a dissent but then decided not to write.”
This is not the first time during the Trump era that Republicans have sought to stomp over state matters. Its effort to dragoon cities into enforcing immigration laws (the so-called “sanctuary city” issue) was blocked last year. As was reported in The Post in November, a federal court found that “the Trump administration’s efforts to move local officials to cooperate with its efforts to deport undocumented immigrants violated the separation of powers doctrine as well as the Fifth and Tenth amendments.” A federal court in Pennsylvania also blocked the administration from cutting off funds on the basis of its sanctuary-city order.
The administration is also suing California for its attempt to restrict the conditions under which the state is required to turn over suspected illegal immigrants to federal officials, and for preventing state officials from sharing nonpublic information with federal officials as to when a suspected illegal immigrant is to be released. In essence, by executive order, the administration is attempting to run roughshod over local and state law-enforcement operations and priorities.
Over a year ago, libertarian legal scholar Ilya Somin wrote:
The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the federal government may not “commandeer” state and local officials by compelling them to enforce federal law. Such policies violate the Tenth Amendment. . . . Trump’s order is exactly the kind of high-handed federal coercion of states and undermining of separation of powers that outraged conservatives under [President Barack] Obama. In fact, Obama did not go as far as Trump seems to do here. Obama never claimed sweeping authority to impose new conditions on federal grants beyond those specifically imposed by Congress.
I have every expectation that if it should ever come to pass that a Democratic president attempts to enlist state enforcement officials in some policy objective, Republicans would be the first to scream about the destruction of our federalist system.
