The California Supreme Court, dominated six-to-one by Democratic appointees, rejected a Republican challenge to the legality of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) attempt to redraw the state’s congressional districts Wednesday.
The court said that it was all right for Democrats in the state legislature to evade a 30-day minimum for new legislative proposals by replacing the text of existing bills with the gerrymandering language.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported:
The state Supreme Court opened the door Wednesday to plans by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats to redraw California’s congressional districts in a gerrymander designed to pick up five seats, rejecting a Republican legal challenge.
A lawsuit Monday by legislative Republicans contended the hastily drafted ballot measure, scheduled for votes in both houses on Thursday, has not been published long enough to meet the public-notice requirements in the state Constitution. But the court dismissed the suit Wednesday in a brief order with little explanation.
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While California law does not allow legislative action on a proposed measure until 30 days after it has been introduced, Democrats apparently sidestepped that deadline with a longstanding practice known as “gut and amend” — taking over other legislation that had been pending for more than 30 days, erasing the contents and replacing them with the redistricting language.
Newsom and the state legislature will now pass the new, partisan map, and send it to the voters for approval in a special election in November that will cost upwards of $200 million. The new map will set aside the non-partisan map achieved through an “independent” redistricting process mandated by voters in 2008. Newsom says that he is retaliating against Texas for redrawing its map this week to benefit Republicans.
However, a redistricting race across the nation would almost certainly benefit Republicans on net, since Democrats have already used gerrymandering in the states they govern, and have few Republicans seats left to dismantle.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Zionist Conspiracy Wants You, now available on Amazon. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
