Chief Justice John Roberts enabled Texas' gambit to gerrymander the state for the GOP [View all]
State Representatives conduct a committee meeting on August 1 in Austin, Texas. - Brandon Bell/Getty Images
The brazen partisan redistricting underway in Texas, with Republicans attempting to entrench themselves in office and Democrats weighing a counter-offensive in blue states, was greenlit by the US Supreme Court six years ago.
Chief Justice John Roberts, in an opinion for a 5-4 court, declared that federal judges could not review extreme partisan gerrymanders to determine if they violated constitutional rights.
Roberts’ opinion reversed cases that would have allowed such districts – drawn to advantage one political party over another irrespective of voters’ interests – to be challenged as violations of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech and association and the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.
The justices split among the familiar ideological lines, with the five conservatives ruling against partisan gerrymanders and the four liberals dissenting.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/chief-justice-john-roberts-enabled-115326184.html
Worst Chief Justice since Roger Taney.
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