‘Sordid business’: Democrats facing possible racist component of California redistricting plan

Democrats manipulated the state Constitution in California recently in order to hold a vote and realign their congressional districts to give more Democrats a better chance of making it to Congress.

It’s part of their hope to take the House majority in this year’s elections, and comes at a time when GOP voters in the state already were vastly underrepresented by members in Congress.

The plan appeared to be moving toward completion when, all of a sudden, a judge has thrown a potential wrench in the works, noting that the mapmaker publicly promoted the fact he was working on a race-based district, which isn’t constitutionally allowed.

It is constitutional expert Jonathan Turley whose has documented the developing complication for Democrats in his column.

He explained, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge Kenneth Lee dissented from a decision upholding the new Democrat-biased districts.

It is Congressional District 13, in the Central Valley, which Lee reveals was the result of openly racial criteria by the principal architect of the new districts, he wrote.

“Lee begins his dissent by quoting Chief Justice John Roberts for a 2006 decision, stating, ‘It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.’ When it comes to gerrymandering, it is all a sordid business of course — but this sordid business may be unconstitutional. The court has accepted that gerrymandering is part of politics. Majority parties, like Democrats in California and Republicans in Texas, have openly redesigned districts, sometimes into absurd shapes, to achieve political ends. One of the vehicles long used to help boost Democratic seats is the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits districts that discriminate against racial minorities. But this law has long been challenged as itself a statutory mandate for racial discrimination.”

He noted the Supreme Court right now is considering in Louisiana v. Callais whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional in barring any district that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”

But Lee cited the work of Paul Mitchell, described as “a California redistricting expert paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, House Majority PAC, and the DCCC to draw a redistricting map for California.”

Mitchell had boasted, the “number one thing that I started thinking about” was creating a “Latino majority/minority district” in Los Angeles, a foundation on race that is not allowed.

The presumption of good faith in such mapmaking fails, however, when “Mitchell refused to answer questions about his motivations and assurances.”

“Mitchell went to great lengths to avoid testifying under oath about how he drew the California map — even though he publicly talked about it to the press and interest groups before this lawsuit,”

Lee said Mitchell’s statements of racist intent should be taken at face value.

“That sets up an interesting scenario. If the Supreme Court rules against the use of race in districting under the Voting Rights Act, the opinion could have blowback on gerrymandering cases that rely on the same criterion. The Roberts court has drawn a bright line against the use of race to discriminate in various areas, including college admissions,” Turley said.

“Moreover, the court (and particularly its three liberal justices) has stressed that one cannot ignore legislative comments on such intent. Just this week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor pushed back on the claims of neutral intent of Idaho legislators in requiring student athletes to play on teams associated with their biological sex. Although the state argued that the record did not show anti-transgender intent, Sotomayor insisted that the record had to be considered and ‘There’s certainly a lot of comments’ that could be weighed on the question.”