{"id":58867,"date":"2018-02-15T05:25:48","date_gmt":"2018-02-15T05:25:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=58867"},"modified":"2018-02-15T05:25:48","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T05:25:48","slug":"judges-say-throw-out-the-map-lawmakers-say-throw-out-the-judges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/judges-say-throw-out-the-map-lawmakers-say-throw-out-the-judges.html","title":{"rendered":"Judges Say Throw Out the Map. Lawmakers Say Throw Out the Judges."},"content":{"rendered":"

Judges Say Throw Out the Map. Lawmakers Say Throw Out the Judges.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

In Pennsylvania, a Republican lawmaker unhappy with a State Supreme Court ruling on gerrymandering wants to impeach the Democratic justices who authored it.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Iowa, a running dispute over allowing firearms in courthouses has prompted bills by Republican sponsors to slash judges\u2019 pay and require them to personally pay rent for courtrooms that are gun-free.<\/span><\/p>\n

In North Carolina, the Republican Party is working on sweeping changes to rein in state courts that have repeatedly undercut or blocked laws passed by the legislature.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rather than simply fighting judicial rulings, elected officials in some states across the country \u2014 largely Republicans, but Democrats as well \u2014 are increasingly seeking to punish or restrain judges who hand down unfavorable decisions, accusing them of making law instead of interpreting it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Civil liberties advocates and other critics have a different take: The real law-flouting, they say, is by politicians who want to punish justices whose decisions offend their own ideological leanings.<\/span><\/p>\n

Court-bashing is nothing new. As far back as the 1800s, New Hampshire\u2019s legislature disbanded the state\u2019s Supreme Court five times, said Bill Raftery, a senior analyst at the National Center for State Courts in Williamsburg, Va., who has tracked legislation affecting the judicial system for years.<\/span><\/p>\n

But political attempts to reshape or constrain state courts have risen sharply in the last 10 years, Mr. Raftery said, propelled by polarization and a fading of the civics-book notion of governmental checks and balances. That became especially true, he said, during the Great Recession that began in 2007, when legislators slashed spending for state judicial systems in the name of balancing budgets \u2014 but also, sometimes, in the cause of punishing courts for rulings they disliked.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt ultimately boils down to this,\u201d he said. \u201cThe courts are not looked on by some legislators as being an independent branch of government. For some, they\u2019re looked on as an agency that needs to be brought to heel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This combative approach, some analysts say, mirrors the heated rhetoric about judicial bias and overreach that has become a staple of national politics.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is Trumpism at the lower level,\u201d said Bernard Grofman, an elections expert at the University of California, Irvine who redrew Virginia\u2019s congressional map in 2015 following a federal court finding that districts had been racially gerrymandered. \u201cThis is the view that if independent branches of government say things that don\u2019t match what you say or do, you fire them; you impeach them; you malign them; you destroy them as best you can.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The latest example is in Pennsylvania, where the State Supreme Court split along party lines last month when it struck down the congressional district map as a Republican-drawn gerrymander. The court gave the Republican-dominated legislature three weeks to draw a new House map, adding that it would take over the map-drawing if the lawmakers could not reach agreement on new boundaries with the state\u2019s Democratic governor.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even after the United States Supreme Court rejected the legislature\u2019s plea to intervene on Feb. 5, Republicans have refused to completely accept the state court\u2019s decision. The president of the State Senate, Joe Scarnati, first raised eyebrows by stating that he would not comply with the court\u2019s order to turn over any data used in drawing the House maps. Later, he said he might file ethics complaints against two Democratic justices who expressed opinions on gerrymandering before the January decision, seeking to disqualify them from the ruling.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Friday, hours before the court-appointed deadline, Republican legislators sent a proposed new House map to Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat.<\/span><\/p>\n

But analysts say the proposed map, which was prepared without input from the legislature\u2019s Democrats, effectively preserves the existing Republican dominance in the House, albeit with boundaries that do not \u201cwander seemingly arbitrarily across Pennsylvania,\u201d as the court said of the map it struck down.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Mr. Wolf rejected the map, and the job of redistricting will fall to Nathaniel Persily, a professor of law at Stanford University who is the court-appointed special master. But in an interview last week, Mr. Scarnati called a court takeover of the mapping process \u201cgrossly unconstitutional,\u201d and pledged to challenge it in federal court.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the State House, Cris Dush, a Republican, is circulating a proposal to impeach the Democratic justices who were the 5-2 majority in the decision. In an interview, Mr. Dush said he did not dispute their authority to strike down the Republican map, but complained that their order to draw new boundaries tramples on legislative powers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Dush said his proposal has support in the House, but that he likely will not press it unless the court takes over the mapping responsibility from the legislature. \u201cIt\u2019s judicial activism,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re not staying within the rule of the law. It happens far too often to us, and it\u2019s time for the state legislature to rise up and call them accountable.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Scarnati, the State Senate president, said he has not ruled out impeachment, but that Republicans should first pursue \u201cother avenues\u201d such as ethics complaints and a lawsuit.<\/span><\/p>\n

The impeachment threat has drawn sharp criticism from some quarters. \u201cCalling for impeachment \u2014 especially five of seven justices, especially when all five are Democrats \u2014 can\u2019t help but look partisan,\u201d said Douglas Keith, a senior counsel at the Democracy Program of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. \u201cWe use impeachment to remove judges for serious criminal or ethical wrongdoing. This is a direct affront to the judicial branch\u2019s power, not reasoned disagreement.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That said, impeachment \u2014 or at least, impeachment threats and attempts \u2014 have become a common tool to pressure courts in recent years, said Mr. Raftery of the National Center for State Courts.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the 2011 to 2012 legislative session, he said, lawmakers filed 14 bills in seven states seeking to remove judges, including an effort by Republicans in the State House to remove the entire New Hampshire Superior Court over its handling of custody and domestic relations cases.<\/span><\/p>\n

But legislative attempts to rein in state judges include a panoply of tactics, from scalpel to cudgel. The North Carolina legislature\u2019s ongoing campaign to remake state courts in more conservative and political lights is perhaps best known. The Brennan Center this week released a list of court-related proposals pending before legislatures in 14 states.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/02\/14\/us\/pennsylvania-gerrymandering-courts.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront<\/span><\/p>\n

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