On Wednesday, the Supreme Court docket handed down a one-sentence order asserting that California’s newly gerrymandered maps, that are anticipated to provide Democrats as many as 5 extra seats within the US Home, could go into impact in the course of the 2026 midterms. These maps had been enacted to counterbalance a Republican gerrymander in Texas, which might additionally give Republicans as many as 5 Home seats.
For those who consider that the Supreme Court docket applies constant authorized guidelines, no matter who advantages from them, then Wednesday’s order in Tangipa v. Newsom is totally unsurprising. In January, the Court docket handed down a unique order blessing Texas’s Republican gerrymander. That call, in a case known as Abbott v. LULAC, didn’t simply allow Texas’s maps to take impact; it additionally imposed new, terribly excessive obstacles in entrance of any plaintiff difficult a legislative map.
So, if the Court docket had struck down California’s maps after issuing such a broad determination within the Texas case, the one believable clarification would have been partisanship.
However the Supreme Court docket’s Republican majority has additionally spent the previous a number of years validating all of the worst fears of the Court docket’s most cynical critics. That is, in spite of everything, the identical Court docket that held that Donald Trump is allowed to make use of the powers of the presidency to commit crimes. And it’s the identical Court docket that spent 2025 eradicating authorized obstacles to Trump’s mass deportations and mass firings of civil servants.
The Republican justices, furthermore, routinely bend the foundations after they really feel strongly concerning the politics of a selected case. In Complete Lady’s Well being v. Jackson (2021), a call shielding an anti-abortion regulation from judicial evaluate, 5 of the Court docket’s Republicans handed down a authorized rule that, if utilized in circumstances that don’t contain abortion, would permit any state to eradicate any constitutional proper. In Kennedy v. Bremerton Faculty District (2022), the Republican justices made up faux details to justify ruling in favor of a conservative Christian litigant — after which caught to their made-up narrative even after Justice Sonia Sotomayor produced photographic proof that they had been mendacity.
The reality is that neither the Court docket’s most earnest defenders — who consider that each Supreme Court docket determination is rooted in religion effort to use the regulation to the details of a selected case — nor the Court docket’s most bitter cynics paint a totally correct image of how this Court docket operates. The justices think about a variety of things after they resolve a case, together with what final result they would like, which social gathering they’re extra sympathetic towards, which final result their political social gathering prefers, what final result is dictated by their very own earlier opinions, and what the regulation really says.
In some circumstances, particularly circumstances that contain technocratic points that aren’t politically controversial, all 9 justices sometimes resolve their case primarily based solely on what the regulation says. In circumstances involving notably contentious points, reminiscent of abortion, the Court docket typically decides the case primarily based solely on the justices private preferences. Many circumstances exist on a spectrum between these two extremes.
Moreover, there are some circumstances, reminiscent of Tangipa, the place most of the justices’ broader ideological commitments lower towards the result they would like. It’s secure to say that each one six of the justices who held that Trump is allowed to commit crimes would additionally like Republicans to regulate the Home of Representatives. However these justices have additionally staked out a sturdy ideological place towards all gerrymandering fits, and that ideological view seems to have triumphed over their slender partisan pursuits in Tangipa.
That is regular conduct by partisan public officers. Members of Congress additionally typically solid votes that lower towards their political social gathering’s rapid pursuits, however which are rooted in a broader ideology. All lawmakers stability their very own private preferences towards the curiosity of their social gathering, the pursuits of their constituents, and the politics of the second.
It’s regular for partisans to solid votes that lower towards their social gathering’s rapid pursuits
For a lot of 2020, the worldwide financial system was in a deep recession triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns. It was additionally a presidential election yr, and Republicans had been in a bind. Trump was within the White Home, and incumbent events sometimes lose huge after they must marketing campaign throughout a recession. Simply ask John McCain.
Within the midst of this financial disaster, congressional Democrats behaved utterly irrationally from the angle of a celebration decided to maximise its electoral positive factors. Then-Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn’t merely work with the Trump administration to craft stimulus payments that may elevate many People from the depths of the Covid recession. She attacked her Republican counterparts for not doing extra to stimulate the financial system. When Republicans introduced a “skinny” stimulus bundle within the fall of 2020, Pelosi and then-Senate Democratic Chief Chuck Schumer denounced it as an “emaciated invoice” pushed by an “excessive right-wing that doesn’t wish to spend a nickel to assist individuals.”
Although Tangipa v. Newsom is a short-term loss for the Republican Get together, it’s in keeping with the GOP’s longstanding views on gerrymandering.
The explanation why is that Democrats usually, and Pelosi particularly, have a longstanding ideological dedication to Keynesian economics — which teaches that the federal government ought to spend extra throughout financial downturns. This dedication stretches again to the New Deal, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s profitable plan to elevate the nation out of the Nice Despair. Pelosi, who was speaker in the course of the 2008–’09 recession, additionally helped push huge spending payments by way of Congress to deal with that recession.
If Pelosi had been a extra ruthless partisan, she might need sabotaged any proposal to stimulate the financial system, with the expectation that Trump would bear the blame for his incapacity to get a invoice by way of Congress. She could even have made unreasonable calls for, hoping that the White Home would refuse them and get tarred as misers. As a substitute, Pelosi’s Democrats labored with Republicans to move trillions in financial stimulus.
In the meantime, many congressional Republicans are at the moment pushing laws that may probably diminish their possibilities of profitable future elections, due to a broader ideological dedication to extra restrictive voting legal guidelines.
Final April, the US Home handed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (“SAVE Act”), which prevents People from registering to vote until they produce “documentary proof of United States citizenship” reminiscent of a passport. Each Home Republican who solid a vote supported the regulation, whereas all however 4 Democrats opposed it. In response to a current push by Republicans to move the invoice within the Senate, Schumer accused Republicans of desirous to “restore Jim Crow.”
However each events are in all probability behaving irrationally, at the least from the angle of cynical electoral politics. Republicans shaped an ideological dedication to restrictive voting laws many years in the past, when low-propensity voters had been extra more likely to help Democrats than Republicans. Democratic President Barack Obama, for instance, received each of his presidential elections by snug margins, however Democrats struggled in lower-turnout midterms in the course of the Obama administration.
Certainly, throughout Obama’s presidency, Republicans typically spoke brazenly about their perception that they may skew elections by making it barely harder to vote. In 2012, for instance, Pennsylvania’s Home Republican chief Mike Turzai claimed {that a} state regulation requiring voters to indicate ID on the polls is “gonna permit [Republican presidential candidate Mitt] Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”
Beneath Trump, nonetheless, this dynamic has reversed. Low-propensity voters now favor Republicans, whereas the type of extremely engaged suburban voters who favored Romney in 2012 have trended towards Democrats. So it’s removed from clear that voting restrictions that Republicans embraced years in the past would really assist them at this time. If something, laws just like the SAVE Act would possibly assist Democrats win elections.
In any occasion, it’s hardly shocking to say that political events maintain constant ideological positions even when these positions lower towards their short-term pursuits. The events sometimes hew to some core positions even when it prices them on the polls. For example, anybody who has paid consideration to US politics is aware of {that a} vote for a Republican member of Congress is a vote for upper-income tax cuts and deep cuts to anti-poverty packages reminiscent of Medicaid. A vote for a Democratic candidate is often a vote for the other. And this has been true for a few years.
Each Obamacare and the 2017 Trump tax cuts had been unpopular after they grew to become regulation, and every social gathering knew that the efforts might harm them within the 2010 and 2018 midterms. However Democrats enacted well being reform and Republicans enacted their tax cuts regardless, due to deep ideological commitments to those tasks.
Equally, Supreme Court docket justices even have predictable views that may be decided solely by which president appointed them. Republican justices oppose abortion and affirmative motion, and help broad authorized immunity for non secular conservatives, amongst different issues. Democratic justices help the other outcomes. And justices of each events have a tendency to stay to those views no matter how they ballot at any explicit time.
The Republican justices have a deep ideological dedication to letting state lawmakers gerrymander their states nonetheless they need
Now let’s return to the Tangipa case, the place a GOP-controlled Supreme Court docket voted in favor of a Democratic gerrymander. This determination carefully resembles Pelosi’s help for financial stimulus in 2020, or Republicans’ persevering with dedication to voting restrictions which are more likely to affect their very own voters. Although Tangipa is a short-term loss for the Republican Get together, it’s in keeping with the GOP’s longstanding views on gerrymandering.
The Supreme Court docket used to allow federal courts to listen to lawsuits alleging {that a} legislative map drawn to profit one social gathering or the opposite violates the Structure. However the Court docket’s Republican majority shut these lawsuits down in Rucho v. Widespread Trigger (2019). 5 years later, in Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP (2024), the Republican justices went a step additional, declaring that “because the Federal Structure is anxious, a legislature could pursue partisan ends when it engages in redistricting.”
Having abolished federal lawsuits difficult partisan gerrymanders, the Court docket’s Republicans then began to dismantle longstanding authorized guidelines prohibiting racial gerrymanders — that’s, legislative maps which are drawn to attenuate the voting energy of voters of a selected race. Certainly, the Court docket’s current determination in LULAC, the Texas gerrymandering case, was a main milestone on this broader venture to close down anti-gerrymandering lawsuits. Amongst different issues, LULAC held that “ambiguous” proof should at all times be construed towards a plaintiff alleging {that a} map was drawn for impermissible racial causes.
It in all probability goes too far to say that this Court docket would permit actually any racial gerrymander to outlive judicial scrutiny. If a state handed a regulation known as the “White Supremacist We Wish to Convey Again Jim Crow, So These Maps Had been Drawn by the Ku Klux Klan Act of 2026,” it’s probably that at the least two of the Court docket’s Republicans would vote to strike it down. However LULAC and different current Supreme Court docket selections impose such excessive obstacles on anti-gerrymandering plaintiffs {that a} state legislature’s racist intent would should be terribly specific earlier than this Court docket would step in.
And so the Republican justices voted to uphold a Democratic gerrymander in Tangipa. They didn’t accomplish that as a result of they’re notably apprehensive about Democratic voting rights or Democratic possibilities within the midterms. They did so as a result of that call is in keeping with their broader venture to eradicate practically all lawsuits difficult gerrymanders.
