The California Supreme Court will not prevent Democrats from moving forward Thursday with a plan to redraw congressional districts.
Republicans in the Golden State had asked the state’s high court to step in and temporarily block the redistricting efforts, arguing that Democrats — who are racing to put the plan on the ballot later this year — had skirted a rule requiring state lawmakers to wait at least 30 days before passing newly introduced legislation.
But in a ruling late Wednesday, the court declined to act, writing that the Republican state lawmakers who filed the suit had “failed to meet their burden of establishing a basis for relief at this time.”
The supreme court denied the republican’s claim that democrats didn’t wait 30 days before passing the legislation.
Democrats used the technique of “editing” an existing bill by replacing all the text. Its not technically new legislation, its an edit, which doesn’t require 30 days before passage. Clearly against the spirit but not letter of that rule.
Courts can only rule on things they are asked to rule on. The court declined to stop the bill based on the specific procedural issue in this case. The court did not rule on the merits of the redistricting law itself. There will surely be more judgments in future
MAGAs have been playing this game for a long time. It’s about time the Dems demonstrated that it’s a two-edged sword that can be welded against them as well.
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When they go low, make them suck your dick.
I always say that when they go low, kick them in the teeth, real hard.
They won’t understand the rules that get ignored by them can be ignored by others too. It’s a cult of control freaks.
Weld that sword into their asshole. I will bring the blowtorch.
I really appreciate commentors like yourself that add value to posts with clarifying details. Thank you!
The national Congress pulls this trick regularly, also in order to get around rules limiting the speed at which legislation can be introduced. I believe the PPACA was passed out of the body of another bill, after Republicans tried to use calendaring rules to obstruct the legislation, back in 2010. One of the bigger tax bills - either Trump’s or Bush’s, I can’t recall - was passed in a similar manner.
Maybe we’ll see a federal court block this on a technicality, but if they do it would be a huge shift in how legislation is moved in the face of minority obstruction.
The federal legislature is one of the worst. They do a ton of awful shenanigans. I would support a constitutional amendment to ban all of those practices.
Bills can have only one subject. The subject needs to be the title. The title cannot be changed.
Those three rules block at least 90% of federal legislative nonsense.
And perhaps the title should be what the bill actually is
For example something like “Freedom for American Internet Choice”
Which likely removes regulation or restriction on a company being a monopoly because the “Freedom” is who can bribe the most and lobby against possible commercial or municipal competition.
There’s plenty of bills like that where the title is incredibly misleading, on purpose, to get people who don’t care to do any research to wonder “why would anybody be against freedom?”
My favorite is “Freedom to Work Act”
Oh that sounds ni… Oh it’s a bill to allow employers to fire you for any reason or no reason at all, and you have no recourse…
Yes, that is what that line means. Washington has very similar language in their constitution and it blocks a lot of shenanigans.
This particular strain of nonsense, certainly.
But, at some level, the legislature governs as it wills. You can’t constrain people with rules when they write and interpret and enforce the rules internally. All the judiciary can do is object to the actions and hope the bureaucracy responds in kind. Judges have no enforcement capacity (partially by design).
The only real way to block legislative nonsense is to grant Judges a hand in selecting/promoting/recalling executive and legislative bureaucrats. And given the current state of the federal judiciary, I can imagine a lot of reasons why liberals would hate that idea.
Often called “zombie bills”… Georgia Republicans do it all the time.
Letter of the law has effectively (and unfortunately) been the law of the land for some time now, the only time judges try to consider the “spirit” of the law these days is when they are corrupt and trying to skew their decisions a certain way while claiming to be impartial.
I have no qualms with people trying to use that fact to maintain the power of the people when we are up against fascists thugs who disregard all laws, spirit or written, whenever it suits them. Fuck them.