Gavin Newsom’s race-based gerrymander is wicked –– the Supreme Court must slap it down 

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• California Post News: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, WhatsApp, LinkedIn California Post Sports Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X California Post Opinion California Post Newsletters: Sign up here!
• Christian Adams is a commissioner on the United States Commission on Civil Rights and the president and general counsel for the Public Interest Legal Foundation.
• It wasn't until 1959 that California finally ratified the 15th Amendment, righting an old wrong.
• Gavin Newsom celebrated last year when Proposition 50 passed, gerrymandering California's congressional map to favor Democrats.
• The 15h Amendment and Voting Rights Act prohibit governments from allocating power on the basis of race.

Gavin Newsom celebrated last year when Proposition 50 passed, gerrymandering California's congressional map to favor Democrats. But the new California map should be struck down by the courts for the same reason the US Supreme Court lately blocked Louisiana's map: Both were drawn using race, in violation of the US Constitution.

Notably, the Supreme Court doomed the Louisiana congressional map in Louisiana v. Callais since legislators in Baton Rouge had been explicit: They wanted to create a congressional seat specifically to elect a black representative to Congress.

Legislators in Sacramento were even more explicit regarding their racial purpose. Legislator after legislator spoke openly regarding their goal of creating "black districts" and "Latino-majority districts." As in Louisiana, they garbled the Voting Rights Act, saying it mandated "voters of color be placed in districts" to elect racial minorities.

In practice, the Voting Rights Act does no such thing. Especially after the Supreme Court struck down the Louisiana congressional map, race can't play a part in legislative line drawing.

In California, over and over and over, legislators boasted regarding racial retribution for redistricting efforts in Texas and other red states. Assemblyman Isaac Bryan, for one example, complained that a "black voter in Texas is worth one-fifth of the representation of a white voter in Texas. I did say three-fifths."

All of this racially saturated rhetoric was applied to push a congressional map that would wipe out five Republican seats in Congress. Partisanship might have been the outcome, but the intent was to allocate power on the basis of race. Sign up for the California Morning Report newsletter.

California's top news, sports and entertainment delivered to your inbox every day. The 15th Amendment to the Constitution makes that unconstitutional.

This week, a three-judge federal panel in Los Angeles will hear arguments from California and the Democratic Party that all of this is permissible behavior by a legislature. They claim partisanship was the intent of the California congressional maps approved in Prop. 50, despite the caustic racial rhetoric during the legislative debates.

For context, the 15th Amendment is a rarely applied provision, largely as legislatures so rarely display such open racial intends with such racially explicit language.

Ironically, California refused to ratify the 15th Amendment after the Civil War. In 1870, Gov. Henry Haight instructed the Democrat-controlled Legislature to reject the amendment's prohibitions on denying the franchise based on race. The party's state central committee circulated leaflets at the time, questioning if "Negroes and Chinamen" should vote.

California is now arguing that since the voters approved the congressional maps, the state should secure a pass on all the racial rhetoric that featured in the legislative debates.

This is a dangerous ask, far worse than anything that a red state is accused of doing in redistricting.

"How many bubbles are in a bar of soap?" That's what election authorities asked black citizens when they wanted to register to vote in the Jim Crow south. The Supreme Court struck down these character tests. Other states like Oklahoma had grandfather clauses. It prohibited registration to vote unless your grandfather had additionally been registered. Again, these were struck down by the Supreme Court.

California's dangerous position is that voters may absolve a racially motivated law if it merely passes a referendum. That's corrosive and outrageous to our constitutional order. The majority was purposefully disconnected with the protection of fundamental rights. America must obtain past this history.

Notably, the 15h Amendment and Voting Rights Act prohibit governments from allocating power on the basis of race. The Supreme Court in Callais took off the table any employ of race whatsoever in line drawing except to remedy a specific Voting Rights Act violation.

If race motivated legislatures in any way, the subsequent map is unconstitutional.

Allocating power using race is wicked. We purchased the 15th Amendment with horrifying amounts of blood and carnage in the Civil War.

Our constitutional order has no place for legislatures drawing legislative maps openly for racial purposes, whether in Baton Rouge or Sacramento.

J. Christian Adams is a commissioner on the United States Commission on Civil Rights and the president and general counsel for the Public Interest Legal Foundation.

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