State Supreme Court Ruled Gerrymandering Is Unconstitutional – Now Republicans Want to Get Rid of the Justices
Republican state lawmakers in Pennsylvania didn’t like that their state supreme court ruled their gerrymandered districts are unconstitutional, so they appealed to a higher authority: the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Samuel Alito on Monday refused to consider the lawmakers’ request to block the state supreme court’s ruling. Confronted with having to create new, non-gerrymandered districts that, if done fairly and correctly, will likely cost Republicans several seats in the U.S. House of Representatives this November, they decided to take a different approach: impeach the five Democratic state supreme court justices whose ruling they didn’t like.
Leading the charge is Republican state Rep. Cris Dush (photo), according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Philadelphia attorney Adam Bonin posted Dush’s memo that was mentioned in the Inquirer, announcing legislation to impeach the state supreme court justices for “misbehavior in office.”
Dush claims to be a “constitutionalist,” according to the vote tracking website Ballotpedia, which quotes him saying, “I believe the founders, as a group, understood human nature relative to governance in a way that has been unique in human history. The Constitution of the United States was written to address the tendency of those in power to seek to draw it unto themselves, and provided means to prevent it.”
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday clearly agreed, which is why they refused to break centuries of judicial precedent that goes back as far as Marbury v. Madison.
“It allowed the Federal Republic to operate effectively without trampling on the sovereign rights of either the states or the individuals,” Dush continued.
The ACLU awarded Dush a 13% rating for the 2015-16 legislative session.
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