All seven Pa. Supreme Court justices issued opinions Wednesday regarding their 4-3 vote to pick a new map of the state's congressional districts. Here's what their opinions revealed about how they chose a map submitted by a group of Democratic voters.
After Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and the Republican majority state House and Senate deadlocked on drawing new lines for 17 congressional districts, reflecting the loss of a seat in the 2020 census, the job was left to the courts.
The state's population increases over the past decade have been concentrated in the southeast, a stronghold for Democrats, while losses have occurred in the more rural and Republican areas of Pennsylvania's northern tier and western counties. A Republican Commonwealth Court judge, Patricia McCullough, recommended the justices go with the GOP-favored map that Wolf had vetoed. The Supreme Court instead went with an approach proposed by a group of Democratic Party-aligned votersIn a dissent, Republican Justice Sallie Mundy said that what distinguished the 13 proposed maps was how compact the shape of the districts were and how much they divided political boundaries.
The other Republican on the court, Justice Kevin Brobson, warned that the majority decision, “by considering numerical partisan metrics and ultimately adopting a reapportionment plan because it provides for ‘proportionality,’ avoids ‘anti-majoritarian’ results, and attempts to offset a ‘structural tilt’ in the political geography of Pennsylvania that favors Republican candidates," will result in greater involvement by the court in future partisan political disputes.
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