A prominent constitutional law professor says the Supreme Court is obliged to hear a new legal challenge to a federal court’s determination that congressional districts in Michigan were unlawfully gerrymandered and will have to be redrawn before elections in November 2020.
Michigan lawmakers and congressional Republicans filed an emergency appeal May 3 with the Supreme Court to set aside a ruling by a panel of three federal judges in Detroit that ordered the state’s electoral map be redrawn because of what the judges unanimously called an unconstitutional “political gerrymander of ‘historical proportions’” that caused “severe” constitutional violations. “A wide breadth of statistical evidence” suggests partisan bias that gave Republicans a strong advantage over Democrats, the ruling stated, according to The Detroit News.
