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A Thoughtful Child Could Spot the Problem With the Supreme Court's Sloppy Pro-Gerrymandering Decision - Balls & Strikes
https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/a-thoughtful-child-could-spot-theOne of the most vexing myths about the Supreme Court is the level of care that it supposedly employs when deciding cases. Even the form these opinions take is designed to impress upon you, the reader, the depth of the justices’ deliberate, methodical analysis: There are references to facts, and lengthy parentheticals quoting persuasive authority, and string pincites to the exact pages of the United States Reports that lead inexorably to the Court’s unimpeachable conclusions.
Cases like Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, the Court’s Thursday shadow docket order reinstating Texas Republicans’ racially gerrymandered map for the 2026 midterm elections, demonstrate just how vapid and shallow the decisionmaking process can actually be. As Justice Elena Kagan points out in dissent for all three liberals, the unsigned majority opinion helpfully shows state lawmakers they can hold future elections using blatantly illegal maps without ever having to worry about the threat of judicial review, as long as lawmakers time the rollout of their racist redistricting plans just right.
Among Kagan’s many beefs with the majority is its invocation of the Purcell principle, which holds that federal courts, in order to avoid causing “voter confusion,” should not “ordinarily” alter election rules close to an election. The opinion in Abbott, which I would bet your life savings is a Brett Kavanaugh special, argues that the district court that blocked Texas’s gerrymander violated Purcell by “improperly insert[ing] itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.”
To any normal person whose brain is not pickled in the maddening vagaries of the Supreme Court’s recent election law jurisprudence, this does not pass the laugh test. The 2026 midterms will take place 11 months from now, and even if you decide to be generous to Texas Republicans and count the primaries as the relevant elections under Purcell, those aren’t happening until March. As Kagan put it, “except to the extent all of us live in election season all the time, the 2026 congressional election is not well underway,” in any meaningful sense. But the majority’s position is that continuing to use the same map from Texas’s previous two elections is more likely to cause “voter confusion” than suddenly replacing it with a brand new, even more pro-Republican map at President Donald Trump’s behest.
Cases like Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, the Court’s Thursday shadow docket order reinstating Texas Republicans’ racially gerrymandered map for the 2026 midterm elections, demonstrate just how vapid and shallow the decisionmaking process can actually be. As Justice Elena Kagan points out in dissent for all three liberals, the unsigned majority opinion helpfully shows state lawmakers they can hold future elections using blatantly illegal maps without ever having to worry about the threat of judicial review, as long as lawmakers time the rollout of their racist redistricting plans just right.
Among Kagan’s many beefs with the majority is its invocation of the Purcell principle, which holds that federal courts, in order to avoid causing “voter confusion,” should not “ordinarily” alter election rules close to an election. The opinion in Abbott, which I would bet your life savings is a Brett Kavanaugh special, argues that the district court that blocked Texas’s gerrymander violated Purcell by “improperly insert[ing] itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.”
To any normal person whose brain is not pickled in the maddening vagaries of the Supreme Court’s recent election law jurisprudence, this does not pass the laugh test. The 2026 midterms will take place 11 months from now, and even if you decide to be generous to Texas Republicans and count the primaries as the relevant elections under Purcell, those aren’t happening until March. As Kagan put it, “except to the extent all of us live in election season all the time, the 2026 congressional election is not well underway,” in any meaningful sense. But the majority’s position is that continuing to use the same map from Texas’s previous two elections is more likely to cause “voter confusion” than suddenly replacing it with a brand new, even more pro-Republican map at President Donald Trump’s behest.
Pretty notable, in my view, that Kagan points out the Supreme Court's pro-gerrymandering decision in Texas is a step-by-step instruction manual for states to draw discriminatory maps while ducking judicial review, and the majority has...nothing to say in response www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
— Jay Willis (@jaywillis.net) 2025-12-05T00:41:22.236Z
[me beginning my rebuttal after getting absolutely fucking waxed by my debate club opponent] I am sure we can all agree that there is no need for me to spend the time it would require to address each of my counterpart's arguments,
— Jay Willis (@jaywillis.net) 2025-12-05T00:43:44.871Z
The Supreme Court is the place where America's nine wisest judges gather in a room to decide that, under the law, state lawmakers get a free pass to racially gerrymander their states, as long as they wait until the election is a couple months away
— Jay Willis (@jaywillis.net) 2025-12-06T16:08:34.502Z