Take that Blue States. Supreme Court makes the right call.
In an unsigned order, the justices granted Texas’ emergency request to block a three-judge federal district court ruling that barred the map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and faulted the lower court for “at least two serious errors” in striking down the map.
First, the majority said the three-judge court failed to apply the usual presumption that lawmakers act in “good faith” and instead construed “ambiguous direct and circumstantial evidence against the legislature.”
Second, it said the lower court should have drawn a “dispositive or near-dispositive” adverse inference against the challengers because they never produced an alternative map that would have met Texas’ stated partisan goals without the racial features they attacked.
