GOP vows suit over new congressional map

PHILADELPHIA — National Republicans say state and federal GOP officials plan to challenge Pennsylvania’s new congressional map in federal court as early as today.

“The suit will highlight the state Supreme Court’s rushed decision that created chaos, confusion, and unnecessary expense in the 2018 election cycle,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Matt Gorman said in a statement Tuesday morning. He said state and federal Republicans will sue in federal court “as soon as tomorrow to prevent the new partisan map from taking effect.”

The renewed vow of a court challenge came a day after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court imposed a new congressional map to replace one it had declared an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.

The fight over the maps has major implications for who wins control of Congress in November. Democrats need to add 24 seats across the country to gain a majority in the House of Representatives, and the new Pennsylvania map is likely to increase their chances of winning several key races in Pennsylvania.

If successful, the challenge would throw voters and candidates into limbo weeks before the first ballots are to be cast in the primary election in May.

But experts have said they do not expect challenges to succeed, saying federal courts are unlikely to intervene in a case decided on state law.

Top Republican lawmakers have fought the court’s ruling for weeks, escalating a nasty political and legal fight, but have been unsuccessful in stopping the state court.

They had vowed to challenge the court’s map even before it was released, and within hours of the court making public the map, Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, and House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny, said they expected to take the issue to federal court, saying implementing the court-drawn map “would create a constitutional crisis.”

President Donald Trump encouraged Republicans to fight the court-drawn congressional map Tuesday morning, tweeting that he hopes they challenge the map “all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary.”

Scarnati and Turzai have tried unsuccessfully before to convince federal courts to intervene in the gerrymandering case, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and stay the order just days after the state Supreme Court overturned the congressional district map. That request was denied by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who did not refer the matter to the full court, as is often done, noted Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

“If you’re a Republican defending a map and you can’t even get Justice Alito to refer the thing to the whole court, that’s a pretty weak challenge,” he said Monday, saying he could not think of a challenge that would be successful.

James A. Gardner, a University of Buffalo law professor and expert in elections law and state constitutions, said the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had not overstepped its bounds.

“We live in an era of partisan irony, I guess, but it is certainly ironic for the Republican Party, the party that at least since Reagan has pro-federalism, pro-state autonomy party, to run to the Supreme Court of the United States to impose national power to set aside the decisions of an autonomous, independent Supreme Court,” he said. “As far as the law is concerned, this is entirely a matter of state law, there is no legitimate ground for trying to run up to the supreme court. A constitutional crisis? No. This is perfectly normal procedure. This is how it works.”