Chief Justice John Roberts paved the way for a major Democratic victory this week with a decision he made at the end of the last decade, political analysts are pointing out.
Justice Roberts delivered a key decision in the 2019 case Rucho v. Common Cause. Roberts siding with conservatives on a 5-4 decision seven years ago kept constitutional limits away from partisan gerrymandering. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern, co-hosts of the Slate legal analysis podcast Amicus, revisited Roberts’ decision in their latest episode and explained how the case gave way to a major Democratic victory in Virginia this week, where voters approved a gerrymandered map that opens four House seats.
“There was a lot of Republican bellyaching this week over these results,” Lithwick said. “But didn’t the Supreme Court pretty much roll out the red carpet for this kind of electoral hardball with the decision in Rucho v. Common Cause?”
Stern suggested that Roberts “thought this would disproportionately help Republicans over Democrats,” but “I doubt he expected states like Virginia to play hardball. But this is exactly what Roberts said he wanted: Let the states decide!”
Madiba Dennie, the deputy editor of Balls and Strikes who appeared on the Amicus episode, called the irony “funny because Republicans could have come together with Democrats at any time and said, ‘we’re going to end partisan gerrymandering.’”
Instead, Republicans said “we want to rig ourselves a structural advantage,” Dennie said. “And now that Democratic voters decided they want a little structural advantage too, Republicans scream and cry.”
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