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john roberts
Blame John Roberts for This Anti-Democratic Redistricting War
It's obvious to a majority of ordinary Americans that partisan gerrymandering undermines fundamental democratic principles. If only the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court would have the courage to admit it.
Apr 25, 2026
In the short run, Democrats' victory in gerrymandering Virginia to create four new blue Congressional districts is a good thing. It will restore balance to the critical 2026 House elections to offset Republicans' Texas gerrymandering which created four new red districts.
President Donald Trump was technically right when the night before the Virginia vote he told a conference of supporters, “I don’t know if you know what gerrymandering is but it’s not good.” Of course what Trump really meant is that gerrymandering is bad when it disenfranchises Republicans but good when it disenfranchises Democrats.
Here's what we do know: partisan gerrymandering is an affront to democracy by letting politicians pick their voters instead of voters picking their politicians. Given Republicans' successful gerrymandering, the Virginia gerrymander was the least bad immediate option. As House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a sharp reversal of recent establishment Democrats' attitude, "When they go low, we strike back."
But looking forward, partisan gerrymandering should be illegal. As Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent to Chief Justice John Roberts' 2019 majority ruling that partisan gerrymandering is non-judiciable, “partisan gerrymanders here debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside-down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people. If left unchecked, gerrymanders like the ones here may irreparably damage our system of government.”
You can blame John Roberts for debasing and dishonoring our democracy and irreparably damaging our system of government.
In his 5-4 majority decision in Rucho v. Common Cause in 2019, Roberts ruled that challenges to partisan gerrymandering are "political questions" that courts may not interfere with. Roberts may have disingenuously claimed in his confirmation hearings that he is nothing but an umpire calling balls and strikes, but in reality he changes the strike zone to favor Republicans.
Partisan gerrymandering blatantly violates the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Partisan gerrymandering treats voters of the then minority party in a state unequally to voters of the then majority party and gives the then majority party an unequal advantage in securing their future electoral control regardless of the will of the voters. Voters from different parties do not have an equal chance to affect the outcome of elections. As Justice Kagan wrote in her dissent to Rucho a voter's constitutional equal protections rights“can be denied by a debasement or dilution of the weight of a citizen’s vote just as effectively as by wholly prohibiting the free exercise of the franchise.”
It's obvious to a majority of ordinary Americans that partisan gerrymandering undermines fundamental democratic principles. An August 2025 Reuters poll found that 55% of respondents, including 71% of Democrats and 46% of Republicans, thought that the partisan gerrymandering taking place in Texas and California are "bad for democracy." Regular Americans understand the dangers of partisan gerrymandering better than John Roberts in his lengthy "legal" opinion that courts can't do anything to prevent it.
Since Rucho was decided in 2019, advances in computer algorithms have enabled the majority party in a state to construct voting districts to virtually guarantee with surgical precision their own electoral victory.
If Roberts and his Republican cohorts on the Court were honest, they would consider revisiting and overturning Rucho and giving lower courts the power to devise standards for deciding if a partisan gerrymander is too much. But given the partisanship of the Republican Justices, that's unlikely to happen.
If, despite the disadvantages of partisan gerrymandering, Democrats regain control of Congress, they should enact legislation term limiting SCOTUS justices (after which they may keep their lifetime judicial tenure by taking senior status) and increasing the number of Justices from 9 to at least 12. This can be done by legislation and does not need to overcome the nearly impossible bar of a Constitutional Amendment. To protect democracy, Court reform should be a key part of Democrats' political platform.
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The Tariff Ruling Shows the Roberts Court Is More Pro-Corporate Than Pro-Trump
The mainstream media, and even much of the progressive media, is misinterpreting the tariff decision as demonstrating the Roberts Court's independence and judicial neutrality. Instead, it demonstrates the court's true masters.
Feb 24, 2026
The US Supreme Court's rejection of President Donald Trump's singular policy on tariffs is a reason for some celebration. During the past year, using the so-called "shadow docket," the Roberts Court had ruled in Trump's favor on an emergency basis 24 out of 28 times.
But the mainstream media, and even much of the progressive media, is misinterpreting the tariff decision as demonstrating the Roberts Court's independence and judicial neutrality.
For example, the New York Times lead article by its chief legal correspondent Adam Lipnick was headlined, "The Supreme Court's Declaration of Independence," and the article argued that SCOTUS's decision "amounted to a declaration of independence." One progressive blogger wrote, "It would be nice—and, in political terms, smart—if the left changes its tune about Roberts in the wake of his courageous stand." An article in the generally liberal Atlantic magazine was headlined, "The Supreme Court Isn't a Rubber Stamp."
But the Roberts Court is not independent. Rather, when there's a conflict between big corporations and Trump, it will side with the corporations.
Most of the media is getting the meaning of the tariffs case wrong.
The plaintiffs challenging the tariffs were represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance funded by billionaire Charles Koch and former Federalist Society chief Leonard Leo who selected the right-wing Justices. Even The Chamber of Commerce filed an amicus brief opposing the Trump tariffs and asking the Roberts Court to overturn them.
In most cases that don't threaten corporate interests, the Roberts Court sides with Trump. However, as with the tariff decisions, in cases soon to be decided on whether Trump can fire a Federal Reserve governor without cause—which threatens business interests—oral arguments indicate they will probably side with the business interests and rule that the Fed is a special case and the president cannot fire a Fed governor without cause. But they will likely bend themselves into pretzels to hold that Trump can fire without cause the heads of most other agencies like the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board, which regulate business and which corporate interests want kneecapped..
Most of the media is getting the meaning of the tariffs case wrong. It does not show that the Roberts Court is independent. Rather, it shows that the Roberts Court is pro-corporate.
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Blame the Escalating Gerrymander Wars on Chief Justice John Roberts
Nobody has done more damage to US democracy and voting rights in the 21st Century than this one despicable jurist.
Oct 16, 2025
America is currently at war over partisan gerrymandering. The Republican-controlled Texas legislature has just gerrymandered voting districts to create five more safe Republican US House seats, as demanded by Trump.
Then Missouri Republicans were ordered by Trump to enact a gerrymander to increase the states' disproportionate Republican minority from 6-2 to 7-1 by cutting Democratic-leaning Kansas City voting districts down the middle. Now JD Vance is urging Indiana Republicans to gerrymander the only two remaining Democratic House districts out of existence.
In response, California Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed a ballot measure that would temporarily suspend California's independent redistricting commission until 2030 and let the Democratic legislature redistrict Republicans out of five seats to match what Republicans have done in Texas.
A large majority of voters nationally don't think partisan gerrymandering should be legal. According to a recent YouGov poll, 69% of Americans think partisan gerrymandering should be illegal and only 9% think it should be legal.
Chief Justice John Roberts (and all of his Republican colleagues on the Supreme Court) disagree with this vast majority of Americans. In 2019, Roberts' 5-4 majority opinion in Rucho v Common Cause (joined by the four other Republicans on the Court) held that federal courts do not have the constitutional power to prevent partisan gerrymandering and restored blatantly partisan gerrymanders in North Carolin and Maryland.
Since Roberts' decision, partisan gerrymandering has exploded. According to Michael Li of the Brennan Center, partisan gerrymandering has given Republicans 16 extra seats in the House. Without that, Democrats would have a House majority and Republicans would not be able to pass the so-called "big beautiful bill" which has led to a government shutdown. As the Brennan Center states, "Gerrymandering decided House control."
Roberts' opinion conceded that partisan gerrymandering is “incompatible with democratic institutions” and “leads to results that reasonably seem unjust.” But Roberts then invented a procedural technicality to bar Federal courts from doing anything about it or to uphold the Constitutional principle of "one person, one vote." Roberts claimed that partisan gerrymandering is a so-called "political question" that Federal Courts have no right to question and must be left to the states. Of course, when one party controls the state legislature, they have every incentive to draw voting districts to guarantee they never lose political power, no matter what the view of the voters is. Voters don't get to pick their own legislators. Instead, legislators get to pick their voters. In her dissent—joined by Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Breyer—Justice Kagan wrote:
"For the first time ever, this Court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because he thinks the task is beyond judicial capabilities. And not just any constitutional violation. The partisan gerrymanders in these cases deprived citizens of the most fundamental of their constitutional rights: the right participate equally in the political process, to join with others to advance their political beliefs, and to choose their political representatives. In so doing, the partisan gerrymanders here debased and dishonored our democracy...enabl[ing] politicians to entrench themselves in office as against voters' preferences...They encouraged a politics of polarization and disfunction."
Is it any wonder that a NY Times/Siena poll taken last week found that only 33% of voters believe that America's political system can still address the nation's problems, while 64% believe the political system is too politically divided to solve the nation's problems?
As former Senate Judiciary Committee counsel Lisa Graves argues in a new book, "[i]n the last twenty years the US Supreme Court has radically curtailed voting rights, undermined anti-corruption measures, encouraged extreme political gerrymandering, restricted the regulation of guns, and obliterated the constitutional right to control one’s reproductive choices. This transformation was orchestrated by a billionaire-backed reactionary political movement, whose interests Chief Justice John Roberts has been all too willing to serve."
Citizens have no power to overturn a US Supreme Court decision. However, California citizens have the ability to equalize Texas Republicans' gerrymander of five House seats. On November 4, they can pass Proposition 50 which lets the State legislature temporarily draw new congressional district maps through 2030, at which point the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission would resume control of redistricting, and supports nonpartisan redistricting commissions nationwide.
It won't completely block John Roberts' 20-year long project to undermine democracy and judicially enact the increasingly MAGA Republican agenda. (It wouldn't be an exaggeration to call it a "judicial coup".) Indeed, this week SCOTUS heard oral arguments in a case where it appears that Roberts will lead the Republican majority to overturn Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act which protects the right of Black voters to have electoral representation. Such a ruling could likely flip as many as 19 House seats from Democratic to Republican, cementing a Republican House majority for the foreseeable future, regardless of the will of the voters.
Passing Proposition 50 is one thing Californians can do to fight back against Justice Roberts' undemocratic judicial campaign, which has helped enable Trump's authoritarianism. Mail-in ballots have already been sent out so California voters can cast "Yes" votes for Proposition 50 from now until November 4. Beyond that, thanks to John Roberts and his Republican colleagues on SCOTUS, other Blue states will have to be brought into the gerrymander wars and enact their own partisan gerrymanders to balance Republican gerrymanders to the extent possible.
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