California officials, Democrats and civil rights groups told the Supreme Court on Thursday the state should be able to use its new congressional map in the midterm elections this fall, arguing the lines were drawn for political rather than racial reasons.<\/p>\n
The filings were in response to an appeal<\/a> from the state Republican Party and Republican state officials, who have asked the justices to set aside a 2-1 lower court decision<\/a> that allowed the state to use the map. That ruling found the evidence of gerrymandering in favor of the state\u2019s Hispanic and Latino communities was \u201cexceptionally weak.\u201d<\/p>\n The Republican challengers asked for a decision by Feb. 9, a deadline for candidates to submit petitions to run in races under the new map. The Trump administration filed a brief last week supporting the emergency appeal, which the justices are teed up to decide in the coming days.<\/p>\n The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in its filing<\/a> defended the map as \u201can openly partisan effort to aid Democratic Party candidates in California as a counterbalance to similar efforts by the Republican Party in Texas,\u201d noting the Supreme Court previously has allowed that kind of partisan gerrymandering.<\/p>\n All three filings Thursday leaned heavily on the fact that the state\u2019s election process has already started, making it too late for courts to intervene. California officials argued in their filing<\/a> that tossing the map would \u201cwreak havoc\u201d on the congressional primary campaigns, since candidates have started to collect signatures and the state starts counting mail ballots in May.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be clear, any changes to the district boundaries at this late stage \u2014 even changes to two districts \u2014 would be quite burdensome for state and local officials and would threaten interference with the orderly administration of the upcoming election,\u201d the state officials wrote.<\/p>\n The map, passed by ballot initiative<\/a> last year, would target seats held by five Republicans in the state and was the second in a wave of partisan mid-decade redistricting that swept the country last year.<\/p>\n The California case is the second high-profile, fast-moving appeal over the ongoing redistricting arms race to hit the Supreme Court. Last month, the Supreme Court\u2019s majority blocked<\/a> a 2-1 lower court ruling that found new Texas districts were likely racially gerrymandered.<\/p>\n In the Texas case, a majority of the justices wrote that the lower court committed two errors when it found legislators drew the new lines based on race. Because of that decision, Texas will be allowed to use its new congressional map in this year\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n The Texas ruling repeatedly surfaced in the briefs filed Thursday. The brief from state officials said that the highly partisan nature of the ongoing redistricting arms race nationwide makes it fraught for the court to decide to intervene. California legislators pitched the redistricting push as partisan, and if the justices stepped in now it could tip the balance of the House.<\/p>\n \u201cPlaintiffs are asking the Court to treat California\u2019s map differently from how it treated Texas\u2019s map, thereby allowing a Republican-led State to engage in partisan gerrymandering while forbidding a Democratic-led State from responding in kind,\u201d the state officials wrote.<\/p>\n