(ReclaimingAmerica.net) – The United States Supreme Court has killed a legal challenge to a new congressional map of Kansas drawn by the state’s Republican rulers whose discontents claim it allows for “racial gerrymandering.”
The Supreme Court justices issued a brief, unsigned decision declining to hear the case brought by leftist nonprofits and a group of Kansas voters who sought to appeal a lower court ruling that upheld the new congressional districts, Newsmax reported.
The new map split Wyandotte County, which includes Kansas City, into two congressional districts for the first time in decades.
After the left mounted a legal challenge, a state court first blocked the new map because of “partisan gerrymandering and diluting the minority vote.”
According to the challengers, new congressional district borders prevented minorities from electing their preferred candidate. The GOP-run state government insisted the changes were necessitated by population growth.
The Kansas Supreme Court upheld the new congressional districts by overturning the lower court’s ruling. It ruled that the challengers had failed to prove the existence of a sufficient number of affected minority voters that could form their own majority-minority district.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Kansas, and the Campaign Legal Center represented the challengers.
“[The Kansas Supreme Court] held that intentional racial discrimination in redistricting is unconstitutional only if it prevents the formation of a majority-minority district,” the group of voters argued in their court documents submitted to the US Supreme Court.
“Under this conception of the Fourteenth Amendment, where minority voters are fewer in number or more dispersed, states have carte blanche to intentionally discriminate against them in drawing districts — even if the legislature announced that it acted specifically to disadvantage minority voters,” the challengers wrote.
“This intolerable rule would apply across most of the country, given the relatively small number of areas with sufficiently numerous and concentrated minority populations,” they elaborated.
At the same time, Kansas asked the US Supreme Court to refuse to hear the case since it lacked jurisdiction and the Kansas Supreme Court had decided the case.
The Kansas government said the case was a “creature of state law.” It insisted that the new congressional map was lawful and did not intentionally discriminate against minorities.
“Petitioners’ argument is premised on the theory that this case involves intentional minority vote dilution,” the state argued.
“But it is not plausible that the Kansas Legislature enacted SB 355 with a racially discriminatory purpose. Petitioners’ claims would therefore fail regardless of the answer to the question presented,” it declared.
What is your opinion? Do you agree or disagree with the court’s ruling? Share your view by emailing [email protected]. Thank you.
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge to Kansas' Republican-drawn congressional map that some voters of the state say allows for racial gerrymandering. https://t.co/5UgWFxP8Ne
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) March 27, 2023
