Pennsylvania court redraws map for voter districts

PHILADELPHIA — The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday released a new congressional district map, upending familiar boundaries, renumbering districts across the state and giving a potential boost to Democrats in the 2018 House elections.

The redrawing of Pennsylvania’s 18 congressional districts is to be in effect for the May 15 primary and substantially overhauls a congressional map widely viewed as among the nation’s most gerrymandered. The map was approved in a 4-3 decision, with four Democratic justices backing it and one Democratic justice siding with two Republicans against it.

The new map likely gives Democrats a better shot at winning seats in Philadelphia’s heavily populated and moderate suburbs where Republicans had held seats in contorted districts, including one labeled “Goofy Kicking Donald Duck.”

Democrats quickly cheered the new map, which could change the predominantly Republican, all-male delegation. The new map repackages districts that had been stretched nearly halfway across Pennsylvania and reunifies Democrat-heavy cities that had been split by Republican map drawers.

“It remedies the outrageous gerrymander of 2011, and that’s the important thing, that the gerrymander be over,” said David Landau, the Democratic Party chairman of Delaware County, which was ground zero for the “Goofy Kicking Donald Duck” district. “All that zigging and zagging is all gone, and it makes Delaware County a competitive seat now.”

Mark Harris, a Pittsburgh-based GOP campaign consultant, echoed the reaction of Republicans in bashing the new product.

“It’s a straight Democratic gerrymander by a Democratic Supreme Court to help Democrats,” Harris said.

Republican lawmakers said they will quickly challenge the map in federal court,

arguing that legislatures and governors, not courts, have the constitutional responsibility to draw congressional maps.

Top Senate Republican lawyer Drew Crompton said Monday that a separation of powers case will form the essence of the GOP’s argument. Crompton didn’t say whether Republicans will go to a district court or the U.S. Supreme Court or what type of legal remedy they’ll seek.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court declined to stop the state court’s order to redraw congressional districts.

Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, who had backed the court’s decision to throw out the 6-year-old map, lauded the court’s “effort to remedy Pennsylvania’s unfair and unequal congressional elections,” and he said his administration would work to update elections systems for congressional races.

Independent analysts said the map should improve Democratic prospects while still favoring Republicans as a whole. An analysis conducted through PlanScore.org concluded the court’s redrawn map eliminates “much of the partisan skew” favoring Republicans on the old Republican-drawn map, although not all of it.

University of Florida political science doctoral student Brian Amos said Democrat Hillary Clinton would have beaten Republican Donald Trump in eight of 18 districts in the 2016 presidential election on the court’s map. That compared with six of 18 districts Clinton won in 2016 under the invalidated map.

The Democratic-majority state Supreme Court ruled last month in a party-line decision that the district boundaries unconstitutionally put partisan interests above neutral line-drawing criteria, such as keeping districts compact and eliminating municipal and county divisions.

The decision marked the first time a state court threw out congressional boundaries in a partisan gerrymandering case. Registered Democratic voters and the League of Women Voters originally sued in June.

The new plan splits only 13 counties. Of those, four counties are split into three

districts and nine are split into two districts. By contrast, the 2011 map split 28 counties.

“The Remedial Plan is superior or comparable to all plans submitted by the parties, the intervenors, and amici, by whichever Census-provided definition one employs,” the court wrote in its order. It also wrote that the plan is “superior or comparable” to the various map proposals on the average compactness of districts and that each district in the map has an equal population, plus or minus one person.

It upends the previous map, with significant changes to where districts are located and the renumbering of several of them. Philadelphia remains divided into three congressional districts, with most of it split between the 2nd and 3rd Districts. A portion of South Philadelphia is drawn into the 5th District based in Delaware County — a substitute of sorts for U.S. Rep. Bob Brady’s 1st Congressional District. That number instead moves north to Bucks County.

In one change, the 4th District is centered on Montgomery County. Critics of the map adopted in 2011 often pointed to Montgomery County, which was split into five districts and had no member of Congress living in the county. Bucks and Chester counties also receive districts based largely on their boundaries.

GOP OPPOSITION

Even before Monday’s order, Republican lawmakers were vowing to challenge in federal court whatever map the court selected. The decision to take the mapmaking into the court’s own hands, they argued, usurps the line-drawing power that the U.S. Constitution gives to state legislatures. And the court did not give them enough time to enact a new map, they said.

“This Court recognized that the primary responsibility for drawing congressional districts rested squarely with the legislature, but we also acknowledged that, in the eventuality of the General Assembly not submitting a plan to the Governor, or the Governor not approving the General Assembly’s plan within the time specified, it would fall to this Court expeditiously to adopt a plan based upon the evidentiary record developed in the Commonwealth Court,” the per curiam order reads,

adding that drawing a map is “a role which our Court has full constitutional authority and responsibility to assume.”

The court notes in the order that all participants in the case had the opportunity to submit proposals and feedback, and it said that its plan “draws heavily upon the submissions.”

Republicans appear to face an uphill battle in federal court.

Michael Morley, a constitutional law professor at Barry University in Florida, said federal courts are normally reluctant to undo a state court decision.

“I think it will be major obstacle and a major challenge to get around it,” Morley said.

Pennsylvania’s delegation has provided a crucial pillar of support for Republican control of the U.S. House since 2010.

Republicans who controlled the Legislature and the governor’s office after the 2010 census crafted the now-invalidated map, and the GOP afterward won 13 of 18 seats in three straight elections even though Pennsylvania’s statewide elections are often closely divided and registered Democratic voters outnumber Republicans.

As the new plan is released, sitting congressmen, dozens of would-be candidates and millions of voters are beginning to sort out which district they live in barely a month before the candidates’ deadline to submit paperwork to run.

Some races are wide open: There are six lawmakers elected in 2016 who are not running again, the most in four decades. There also is a surge in interest in running for Congress, with Democrats vehemently opposing Republican President Donald Trump.

The new map will not apply to the March 13 special election in the 18th Congressional District between Republican Rick Saccone and Democrat Conor Lamb for a seat left vacant by Republican Tim Murphy’s resignation amid an abortion scandal.

But the winner will have a short stay in the seat unless he moves: The court’s map puts both candidates’ homes in districts with a Pittsburgh-area incumbent.