Someone Ask Alito: If December Was Too Late To Fix Unconstitutional Gerrymandering For The 2026 Midterms, Why Is May Okay?
from the iokwyar dept
Last December, Justice Alito told Texans they had to vote under an unconstitutional gerrymander because changing maps in December would deprive them of “certainty” before the 2026 midterms. Yesterday, with voting already underway in Louisiana, he rushed the certified copy of the Callais ruling out the door so Southern states can hurry up and redistrict before that very same election.
It seems like a hypocrisy worth pointing out, even as Alito and the MAGA faithful will studiously look the other way.
I covered some of this on Friday after the Callais ruling first came out, but with Justice Samuel Alito rushing the certified copy of the decision to help speed up the redistricting of Southern states to wipe out Democratic districts, I feel like we need to make this point even clearer.
To briefly backtrack, in November, a Trump-appointed judge wrote an incredibly detailed ruling on why Texas’ attempt to gerrymander away Democratic districts was clearly unconstitutional. The ruling was 160 pages of incredibly thorough argument and analysis.
The ruling went to the Supreme Court where, on the shadow docket, it was overturned with a five paragraph explanation with little detail. Justice Alito added a concurrence, in which he talked up the importance of “certainty” for Texans on which map would be used for the 2026 election (still months away, and ignoring that if the lower court ruling held, the maps would remain as they were for the 2024 election, which everyone was used to). But, no, can’t interfere with the election map in December before an election year claims Samuel Alito:
I join the order issued by the Court. Texas needs certainty on which map will govern the 2026 midterm elections, so I will not delay the Court’s order by writing a detailed response to each of the dissent’s arguments.
Ah yes, certainty.
About that. On Monday, Alito agreed to rush making last week’s Callais ruling official. While normally there’s a 32-day waiting period, Alito said we needed to jump the gun… because he knows that a bunch of Southern states want to speed up their redistricting plans, even though some have already begun voting. In a pissy response to Justice Jackson’s dissent (which Alito calls “baseless,” “trivial,” and “insulting”) he also argues:
The dissent would require that the 2026 congressional elections in Louisiana be held under a map that has been held to be unconstitutional.
Um. Yes. But the Texas map was also held to be unconstitutional. In great detail. And you said it was too late to change it for this year’s election.
Meanwhile, Louisiana’s voting has already started. And you’re now rushing this decision, allowing Louisiana to try to claim a state of emergency to stop the voting, and ignore the will of the people… because you think it’s “insulting” that Louisiana might have to vote on districting that you’ve just declared unconstitutional.
Can some journalist please ask Alito why December was too late to fix Texas’s unconstitutional map — when voters there needed “certainty” — but May isn’t too late to halt an in-progress Louisiana election to fix theirs?
Literally the only consistent throughline is that both decisions favor the election of more Republican candidates.
Filed Under: calais, gerrymandering, louisiana, samual alito, supreme court, texas
Comments on “Someone Ask Alito: If December Was Too Late To Fix Unconstitutional Gerrymandering For The 2026 Midterms, Why Is May Okay?”
Because Alito is a politician in a black robe.
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Yes.
ALL SCOTUS Justices are politicians and always have been; all SCOTUS actions are ultimately political.
Few people discern this SCOTUS charade and it’s thus been very effective in defeating democratic governance.
Everyone in the republican party is a child raping nazi. End, of, story.
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Because it wasn’t actually unconstitutional, the court didn’t want to do a full hearing, and just wanted to tell the judge “fucck off, no, you can’t do that now”.
KBJ is, to be clear, an absolute moron completely unqualified to be on the court. Even Sotomayor and Kagan make fun of her.
Unconstitutional because it was fffing racist.
Except it wasn’t. I mean one judge ruled it was, but that judge was then expressly overruled (granted without a lot detail).
I know you’re really bad at law stuff, but the map that was constitutional was allowed to be kept, the racist unconstitutional map had to be replaced as an emergency.
It’s all perfectly reasonable, but you’re crying because you don’t understand the law, think rulings should be outcome driven rather than law-driven, and you’re very confused by how your side could possibly be losing (even though it’s obvious to most people…you can’t be racist).
But this up is down and good is evil stuff is getting crazy man. You can totally win an argument if you just redefine all the words, amiright?
Kinda like calling me a fascist but the antisemitic guy with the totenkopf totally isn’t.
Gawd, you suck. Go back to lying about Murthy.
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Again you are telling on yourself. A court gave a detailed explanation of how the map was unconstitutional because it was clearly done for racist reasons (indeed, the judge went into great detail showing all the evidence of racism as the motivating factor in the decision).
So your claim that it’s fine to redistrict Louisiana due to racism in the middle of an ongoing election doesn’t pass the laugh test. The evidence (a ton of it) showed that the Texas redistricting was racist. The Louisiana one was NOT. Literally the point that Alito made is that the Louisiana map was done for political purposes, not because of race, which is what made it okay.
So, no, you’re not making any sense, in part because you don’t actually understand the law, nor have you read the decisions (are you still pretending Alito overturned an earlier precedent despite him saying he wasn’t?)
I get that you work backwards from “what will MAGA like” and then justify literally everything based on that, but that leads you to constantly just getting your facts wrong, because you’re just pretty dumb.
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As a UK native
I’d just like to say that over here gerrymandering is synonymous with massive and blatant political corruption meant to expressly deny the right of the people to have their own lawful choice of political representatives
There’s been several scandals in the UK which is why we now use a non-political electoral commission to deal with boundary issues for the nation
The naked corruption in the USA political process regarding seat rigging is almost as astounding as seeing your blatantly crooked and partisan USA Supreme Court judges shill for said corruption
Has your Supreme Court not corrupted enough of the USA?
So, if I got the chance to, I’d like to ask both your Supreme Court and the troll in this thread also shilling for this perversion of your country’s law and order this question
“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
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I would be fine with banning partisan gerrymandering. The Democrats even brought up a bill that would’ve banned it nationwide. Guess who voted it down!
Until the GOP decides that gerrymandering is worth banning nationwide, Democrats can and should do it themselves where- and whenever they can. Both sides should disarm themselves at the same time; if the GOP won’t do it, neither should the Democrats.
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Unfortunately, when it comes to “conservatives” there’s precious little decency to be found. Many are racist, homophobic, sexist, hate filled, indoctrinated to the worst that “Christianity” has to offer, and quite frankly idiotic and/or stupid (yes there is a difference). The idiocy is institutional, they’ve dumbed down the schools, cut educators, and increased class sizes (no child left behind, means they all are). Stupidity however is by personal choice.
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Except it wasn’t. And SCOTUS said it wasn’t, told the judge to stop, cuz it wasn’t.
I get that you keep on clinging to what the judge said, but it doesn’t fuccking matter, he was overruled. It’s almost as if…you don’t understand how laws and the courts work.
Funny, that’s what I was accusing you of (and have many times before). “I know you are but what am I” is not much of a comeback, retard.
What a loser.
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This is literally false. You are, once again, showing you do not understand the law. SCOTUS did not say the maps were not racist. It simply put a stay on the original ruling given the timing. It made no ruling at all on the merits.
Considering how frequently you insist that the Murthy ruling meant nothing because it wasn’t on the merits, it’s pretty funny that you now pretend the LULAC shadow docket was somehow on the merits.
It’s not, but of course, you’re too ignorant to understand the difference.
Again, he was not “overruled.” There has been no actual ruling on the merits. The ruling was stayed (without any briefing) because of the timing. A ruling on the merits may come later.
It is fucking hilarious that you claim this in this comment which repeatedly demonstrates that you understand neither how the law nor the courts work.
I know you do that because projection is all you have. Unlike you, I am not a supporter of a particular team. I am a supporter of the Constitution. That means I frequently criticize both Republicans and Democrats. You, on the other hand, will ALWAYS side with Trump. You have never, not once, pointed to anything that Trump does that you disagree with. You have never, not once, admitted that Trump is hypocritical. You have never, not once, hihglighted how the things you said were bad about Biden Trump has done but worse.
I am consistent in my views on the law. You are only consistent in your willingness to defend your cult leader.
I have principles. You are nothing but a sheep.
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Cuz they didn’t do a full hearing, you absolute moron. They just said, “this is nuts, stop”.
You are now just *completely making shit up based on what they didn’t say” (which was nothing)
You literally believe in outcomes, not law.
You are in fact a hyper partisan leftist
You absolutely do not. You think districts can be drawn based on race (specifically forbidden, actually)
Lol, no. You misspelled “rarely”. Like a couple dozen times over decades.
Sure I have. I pointed out that he should’ve forced TikTok to sell earlier and in fact was breaking the law when he didn’t. It’s not my fault you don’t read.
Trump doesn’t speak precisely. YOU are WAY more hypocritical than Trump, actually.
Shit you make up doesn’t count. Seriously, you just make up comparisons all the time and they’re all fucking bullshit. “Biden didn’t force Twitter to censor” (yeah, they did) “but this other random thing I don’t like is actually WAY worse than what Biden did” and it just fuccking never is, actually, you are just making shit up. Like Carr pointing out the Equal Time Rule is a real law or something.
Literally the only thing you’re consistent about is far left outcomes.
You are a disgusting slimeball who will purposefully lie to further an agenda, actually.
Re: Re: Re:3
As always, everyone here can read what I have said, backed up by what’s actually in the filings. They can look at what Alito said, how it contradicts himself based on which party it favors, and decide who is the one who is accurate here.
Me. Or you.
It seems pretty clear, and I’ve yet to see a single person agree with you on any of this stuff.
But thanks for finally admitting that there wasn’t a full hearing on the merits of the Texas case after falsely claiming they reversed the lower court. You could at least admit you were wrong.
But you’ll never do that.
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Re: Re: Re:4
1) you apparently can’t read, since that’s what I said from the start.
2) that doesn’t matter in the way you think it does. The judge was de facto overruled. SCOTUS doesn’t always have time for full hearings and many stays are quite brief.
3) I wasn’t “admitting” anything, you retard, I was explaining it to you
Wow, appeal to majority fallacy! Yeah buddy, you have a very tiny cult here. A cult of retards. People self-select communities. You even enabled them to screen out dissent, like little antifa thugs.
Re: Re: Re:5
You are so simple-minded and easy to bait into proving yourself a fool.
In the Murthy case, you insist that the remand for standing is not anything important (despite it being a detailed ruling on the merits after full briefing and oral arguments, and the majority of the court agreeing there was no evidence of the supposed censorship).
Yet, here, in a shadow docket ruling done on zero briefing and no real explanation is “overturning” a lower court decision.
Thanks, once again, for proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that you have no principles, and that you will bend over backwards until your head is fully up your ass to defend anything that is seen as “supportive” of MAGA, while twisting all the way over the other way to diminish any ruling that highlights where MAGA is full of shit.
Re: Re: Re:6
Yeah, retard, because one is a RULING (just a brief one) and a lack of standing is not. (at least not on the substance)
In one case, the lower court was given orders, that matter. In the other, the court just says “you shouldn’t have brought this” and no orders are given.
I’m sorry I have to explain this to your illiterate ass.
Literally this is meaningless coming from you. The only principle you have is whatever advances trans space communism.
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It is so funny to watch you so confidently display your own ignorance. Do you seriously believe the LULAC shadow docket ruling is a more meaningful document than the Murthy ruling?
OMG.
That’s fucking hilarious.
Please, dude, never stop demonstrating how fucking ignorant you are.
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Re: Re: Re:8
As usually, Jonathan Turley, an actual lawyer (and professor!) says you’re an idiot.
Your insults mean nothing.
https://jonathanturley.org/2026/05/05/baseless-and-insulting-three-justices-chastise-jackson-for-a-groundless-and-utterly-irresponsible-claims-over-the-finalizing-of-the-voting-rights-opinion/
Re: Re: Re:9
Literally laughing out loud that you think the most well known partisan legal commentator, Jonathan Turley, who bends over backwards to justify anything Trump does… is a useful counter example.
If anything it just proves I’m right.
Re: Re: Re:9
“I’m not racist!” screams the guy who posts a blog link comment section full of mask-off white robed racists burning virtual crosses on the lawn of the only sitting justice on the Supreme Court with experience as a public defender and with more trial court experience than anyone else.
You’re telling on yourself so much here by indicating the propaganda you consume. This proves why you don’t like to cite your sources. You know a steaming pile of toxic waste bullshit isn’t a good citation.
Re: Re: Re:7
Two things.
Re: Re: Re:5
And yet, it’s wholly telling that in all the time you’ve been posting here, the only people who have ever agreed with you on anything are people who came here to troll this site. If your arguments are so good, you should be able to get at least one person who posts here regularly on your side—and yet, even the worst trolls rarely step up to help you. Hell, they probably flag you, too.
And you can go “appeal to majority fallacy” all you want; I don’t give a shit. Your arguments are so bad that pretty much nobody else on this site is willing to defend them. Why don’t you have even one person on your side, dude?
I’ve seen plenty of people disagree with Techdirt articles (notably the AI-centric ones as of late) and not get flagged. Maybe take the hint that dissent is welcome and your asshole behavior—like, say, using an ableist slur in every post you make only because a pedophile billionaire made it implicitly “cool” for you to do nowadays—is not.
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Re: Re: Re:6
shhh, cakeboy, I am so beyond caring what you say about anything.
Re: Re: Re:7
And yet you couldn’t stop yourself from caring so much that you just had to post a response.
You just can’t stop lying, not even to yourself, can you?
Re: Re: Re:7
Why must you turn this comments section into a house of lies?
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You played the Uno Reverso on the article first, and that makes you the winner. Fucking retard.
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The gambler’s principle shows up in surprising places: 99% of bigots quit using slurs before they hit a big “debate” win.
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You would lose an argument with a fetid rat corpse because it has more integrity.
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A decaying corpse still has more working brain cells than that jackass.
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“Republican judges hate due process and won’t do their jobs” isn’t the flex you think it is.
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You’re here spreading fascist propaganda now. We don’t have to go looking in your past for mistakes you made when you were young. You’re muddying waters on behalf of a fascist movement right this very second.
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Hot dog hollers, ya fascist cunt.
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That’s an image, of a screaming hotdog. But agreed.
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Not even the expression, but no, “objection is not the first sign” you retard.
If it makes you feel better, the response is trending more to “sure, whatever” because it literally doesn’t mean anything anymore when a shitlib says it.
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If the general right-wing response to being called a fascist is “sure, whatever”, you must be left as fuck, because you got so upset about being called a fascist that you started using the R-word all the time.
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You not understanding what terms mean, even after it’s been explained to you, isn’t the same as them not meaning anything. There a hundreds of academic articles that can explain it to you if you cared to understand it, but your accusation is a confession as always. You don’t want the term to mean anything. You don’t want to know what anything means because you want to use it in whatever way you perceive will benefit your argument in the moment. You accuse others of being racist or fascist in order to water down the meaning, but those terms still mean something. Trump does the same thing. The irony is that conservatives spent decades decrying how post-modernism decoupled the concept of objective truth from the general perception of reality in society, but conservatives have fully embraced that reality is whatever you want it to be, even variably in any moment. The “truth doesn’t care about your feelings” crowd invents their own “truth” based on their feelings. All events are reframed through the propaganda lens. You’re taught to trust people who sell you dick pills and dewormer and distrust the people who would make sure you got affordable healthcare. When you lash out, the irony is that you’re just performatively displaying your own self-harm. So please, continue demonstrating how self-destructive you are while chasing that dopamine hit.
Thank goodness both of these rulings came out of the emergency docket, so no precedent is set :^)
Now when Democrats regain power and redistrict everything the court can comfortably flip flop back to “Nuh uh, 6 years notice is too short to revise districts. There’s no precedent for this!!111”
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Oh I expect that they’ll be flipping/exposing their true position a lot sooner due to multiple democrat states deciding to play by the new republican rules.
I fully expect that within the next month or two, or at the latest before the mid-terms SCOTUS will declare that the democrat efforts to gerrymander republican voters out of their voting maps are unconstitutional and must be reverted even as they greenlight republican efforts to do so.
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…the Callais decisions aren’t shadow docket rulings and are very definitely precedential.
They’ve gutted what was left of the Voting Rights Act. It’s kind of a big fucking deal.
This AR Moxon quote seems to be relevant again and again:
https://mastodon.social/@JuliusGoat/109551955251655267
It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.
It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.
It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.
It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.
For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue—the greatest.
It's simple: If it helps republicans it's legal/constitutional. If it helps democrats it isn't.
SCOTUS is really going above and beyond in their efforts to make crystal clear that they are the most openly corrupt court in the US, the only thing more horrifying is the thought of what the fifth circuit will do in response to make their case that they deserve the ‘title’ more.
Re: It isn't that simple
The SCOTUS decisions as matter of law need some constitutional justification, and the judges do have a legal background to draw upon.
There is some degree of papering over their political biases here with reasonings.
The SCOTUS decisions in procedural matters are comparatively distant from the Constitution. As such, there is a lot of leeway to create partisan findings here. The limiting factor here is rulings create precedent binding future conduct. This is where the shadow docket shines: it does not create precedent, except that the Conservatives on the court are already “read my lips” protesting that lower courts should consider it precedent if the results rather than the unknown reasoning fits the majorities’ taste.
TLDR: SCOTUS is utterly corrupt, but more deviously so than you give them credit for.
Re: Re: It really is, tho.
Every lawyer worth the paper their JD is printed on knows that this bench is an arm of the Republican Party’s fascist wing. The ones who should get to keep that JD see this as a bad thing, and are doing what they can to mitigate the impact.
It is a matter of today's longevity
In Oscar Wilde’s time, he quipped in one of his works (don’t ask me to figure out which) “if you aren’t a liberal in your youth, you have no heart. If you aren’t a conservative later in life, you have no brain.”
He did not see the conclusion “if you aren’t corrupt as a geezer, you have no greed.”
As always with Fascism, calling out the hypocrisy makes no difference: the hypocrisy is the point, a signal of power to it’s supporters.