Okay, I can breathe again. I was afraid that Justice Alito was going to go completely rogue and grant a stay of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling asked for by the Republicans in that state, but he denied that stay on Monday. That means the district maps for Congressional elections in that state have to be redrawn for the November midterms.





The Supreme Court on Monday denied Republican requests to delay a Pennsylvania state court ruling requiring that the state’s congressional map be redrawn, increasing the likelihood that the map will be redrawn ahead of November’s midterms. Pennsylvania is a fierce battleground state, with a half-dozen House seats now held by Republicans seen as competitive. If the legislative map is redrawn in a way that benefits Democrats, it could help the party in its drive to retake the House. Republicans currently control 12 of Pennsylvania’s 18 congressional districts. Justice Samuel Alito, the member of the court who hears emergency requests from states, denied the efforts — one from state GOP lawmakers and another from Republican voters in the state — for a stay of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s January ruling that the state’s congressional map had been drawn in a way that unfairly favored Republicans.

This should make it easier for Democrats to take control of the House. It already seems likely, but the way the maps are drawn in Pennsylvania now give the bulk of their seats to Republicans even though the overall vote split is pretty much even. If the Pennsylvania delegation is split, that’s 3-4 seats swung right there. So this could be a very big deal and have a huge impact.

We are still awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Wisconsin case involving partisan gerrymandering, which would be even more important if it comes out right. That could come out any day now. It was the very first case they heard oral argument on in the fall and it was believed that they scheduled it that way so that if they ruled that the maps had to be redrawn, there would be time to do that before the November midterms without too much disruption and difficulty.

But the longer it goes without a ruling, the less likely that seems. And now there are several lower court rulings that are stayed while we wait for the ruling to come down. If it doesn’t come down soon, it’s unlikely that they’ll get it done by November, or that they would require that at all. If they wait until the end of the term to release it, there’s no way it would get done in time. So I hope they hurry up — but only if they’re going to rule the right way!

They already know the outcome and have known it for some time (a vote is taken during a conference shortly after oral argument in each case), so I can only surmise that there’s a lot of disagreement over the specifics and probably multiple intersecting plurality opinions being circulated among the justice.