Tag: Hans von Spakovsky

Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, is a widely experienced international correspondent, commentator, and editor who has reported from Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Because this type of discrimination is the gateway drug of the identity politics balkanizing America, Tuesday’s decision is a boost for unity and a setback for those who want to divide Americans. But the administration should go even further. Just last Friday, the two of us published a Heritage Foundation paper calling on the administration to stop giving preferential treatment on the basis of “race, color, national origin or ethnicity in any of its programs and activities.” Indeed, we think that the administration should stop collecting data, including in the Census, on artificially created ethnic groups, such as “Hispanics” or “Asians,” which bring together under large umbrellas disparate cultures and races. That would really cut identity politics off life support. Yes, since the first one in our history in 1790, the U.S. Census has asked a question about race—but that has always been something quite incidental to apportionment and taxation. The question on citizenship, which the administration now wants to bring back, has been asked for much of America’s history, and until recently was uncontroversial. Reinstating a question about citizenship in the 2020 Census is a small but salubrious step. Even the New York Times said the Obama-era “guidance was controversial at the time that it was issued, for its far-reaching interpretation of the law. As U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said in 2007, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” >>> Read the new paper, “Eliminating Identity Politics from the U.S. Census,” by Gonzalez and von Spakovsky, here.

How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk” and “Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department.” Election lawyers, state legislators and political junkies were surely all disappointed on June 18 when the Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, avoided deciding whether partisan gerrymandering violates the Constitution. Instead, it sent the Gill v. Whitford case arising out of Wisconsin back to the lower court, holding that the plaintiffs had failed to demonstrate Article III standing because they had not shown any specific, individual injury to their right to vote. The plaintiffs in Gill were 12 Democratic voters who challenged the state legislative redistricting plan drawn by Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled legislature. They alleged that the statewide plan unfairly favored Republican voters and candidates by “cracking” and “packing” Democratic voters in order to diminish “the ability of Wisconsin Democrats to convert Democratic voters into Democratic seats in the legislature.” As they explained to the Supreme Court: Cracking means dividing a party’s supporters among multiple districts so that they fall short of a majority in each one. Roberts’ opinion goes through the cases in which the Supreme Court considered the issue of partisan gerrymandering. The essence of the Gill case was the plaintiffs trying to convince Kennedy that the efficiency gap is the measurable standard he was looking for. Even the challengers in Gill didn’t claim that there should not be any politics involved in redistricting. So how much politics is acceptable and how much politics is too much? But the Supreme Court never reached this substantive issue because the court said the plaintiffs were alleging a statewide injury to the Democratic Party, not a specific injury tied to the legislative districts in which they reside and vote. Posted in Gill v. Whitford, Benisek v. Lamone, Symposium on the court’s rulings in Gill v. Whitford and Benisek v. Lamone, Featured Recommended Citation: Hans von Spakovsky, Symposium: The Supremes put off deciding whether politics violates the Constitution, SCOTUSblog (Jun.