[EL] Can federal partisan gerrymandering claims still be brought in state court?

[Michael Morley]

I think some of Nick's analysis might be indirectly in tension with ASARCO v. Kadish, 490 U.S. 605 (1989), which deals with U.S. Supreme Court review of state-court rulings in cases that initially would've been non-justiciable in federal court.

Nick's post distinguishes between two types of cases.  First, there could be situations in which federal and state political gerrymandering claims are both brought in state court, and the state court construes both the U.S. and state constitutions the same way, and as imposing identical remedial requirements.  In those situations, as Nick points out, the "independent and adequate state-law grounds" doctrine would preclude federal review.  As he notes, however, the federal claims really aren't doing any work in those cases, and the state court's adjudication of them is largely irrelevant (except perhaps as "shadow precedent," in the manner Nick intriguingly suggests).

Second, there could be a case in which: (i) only federal claims are brought in state court, or (ii) the state court construes the U.S. Constitution as providing stronger protections against political gerrymandering, or providing more extensive relief, than the state constitution.  If a state court of last resort allows a political gerrymandering ruling for plaintiffs to stand in either of those types of cases, I think it's likely the ruling is reviewable by the U.S. Supreme Court, and -- unless the U.S. Supreme Court decides to overturn Rucho -- it should reverse the state-court's ruling.

Under ASARCO (to oversimplify a bit), the Supreme Court considered a case that was initially non-justiciable, filed by a plaintiff who lacked standing.  That plaintiff ultimately prevailed in the state courts.  The Supreme Court held that it had jurisdiction to hear the defendant's appeal, even though a federal court couldn't have heard the case as an initial matter.  The state court's ruling ordering relief against the defendant constituted injury-in-fact to the defendant, giving it standing to seek federal review and creating a justiciable dispute.  Thus, ASACRO recognizes that cases which couldn't initially have been filed in federal court due to justiciability restrictions may nevertheless be amenable to Supreme Court review.

The political gerrymandering hypothetical isn't exactly the same, of course, since the justiciability barrier is the political question doctrine, rather than lack of standing.  Like the defendant in ASARCO, however, when a defendant in a political gerrymandering case seeks Supreme Court review, the nature of its claim is different than that of a plaintiff initially attempting to invoke federal jurisdiction.  The defendant isn't really bringing a "political gerrymandering" claim.  Rather, it's arguing the state court has impermissibly limited its sovereign power to draw district lines based on an erroneous construction of some federal constitutional provision, like the First or Fourteenth Amendment.  Such an argument may be especially strong in the context of congressional redistricting, where the defendant can argue that the state court impermissibly burdened or limited its exercise of power under the U.S. Constitution's Elections Clause to determine the "manner" in which congressional elections are held.

Rucho held there are no judicially manageable standards under any U.S. constitutional provisions for prohibiting political gerrymandering.  A state court ruling interpreting the First Amendment, Equal Protection Clause, or some other U.S. Constitutional provision as imposing a test or standard for prohibiting political gerrymandering claims is contrary to that holding.  Even if one construes the political question doctrine exclusively as a jurisdictional doctrine (but see Tara Grove and John Harrison), its applicability in this context depends on the Supreme Court's conclusions about various provisions of the U.S. Constitution that state courts aren't free to disregard.  The Supreme Court could grant certiorari to enforce its construction of those constitutional provisions -- even if that construction is that they don't give rise to any judicially applicable prohibitions on political gerrymandering -- and I don't think there are any justiciability barriers to it doing so.

If this argument is correct, a defendant still would not be able to remove a political gerrymandering claim under the U.S. Constitution from state court to federal court.  It would have to litigate the matter through the state courts until it can seek Supreme Court review of the state judiciary's rulings.

P.S. - I discussed and argued against the possibility of litigating claims that are nonjusticiable under Spokeo in state court in:   https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2946482


Michael T. Morley
Assistant Professor of Law
Florida State University College of Law
mmorley at law.fsu.edu
(860) 778-3883



________________________________
From: Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> on behalf of Nicholas Stephanopoulos <nicholas.stephanopoulos at gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 30, 2019 1:28 PM
To: law-election at UCI.EDU
Subject: [EL] Can federal partisan gerrymandering claims still be brought in state court?

Will Baude has an intriguing post<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__reason.com_2019_06_28_can-2Dfederal-2Dpartisan-2Dgerrymandering-2Dclaims-2Dbe-2Dbrought-2Din-2Dstate-2Dcourt_&d=DwMFaQ&c=HPMtquzZjKY31rtkyGRFnQ&r=5f6POwjrH_vnsYmoF-4bLjJfKWN5xS43XQSvIUnmNR4&m=ogVKeQ0nI4GVhAPtGwquA8E75OaxvAJ9K9An08BAFIg&s=LljW1SKazDRI9mB8qWXW9SAtH6FRcmiqUjOwbDW9kqE&e=> suggesting that, even after Rucho, federal partisan gerrymandering claims can still be brought in state court. The rationale is that federal jurisdictional doctrines like standing, mootness, and justiciability don't apply in state court. So a state court could reason: (1) The Supreme Court unanimously believes that extreme partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional. (2) The Supreme Court also believes that partisan gerrymandering claims are nonjusticiable. (3) However, we believe that such claims are justiciable. (4) So we're going to adjudicate them.

I'm curious whether this move would be attractive to the litigants currently pursuing (or considering pursuing) state constitutional partisan gerrymandering claims. On the one hand, these claims are only being brought in forums thought to be receptive. If state courts are already expected to be sympathetic to state claims, it might be pointless to add a federal claim to the mix.

On the other hand, after Rucho, any judgment a state court reaches on a federal partisan gerrymandering claim would seem to be nonreviewable by the Supreme Court. The Court couldn't tell the state court to apply a federal jurisdictional doctrine that the state court rejects. And the Court couldn't reach the merits of a federal partisan gerrymandering claim. As long as Rucho remains good law, then, it appears possible for state courts to generate a body of shadow precedent about partisan gerrymandering under the federal Constitution. These rulings could never be recognized by federal courts. But they would nevertheless have legal force. And they would serve as powerful evidence that Rucho is wrong: that courts are indeed capable of deciding federal partisan gerrymandering claims consistently and non-arbitrarily.

Two final points: First, a defendant against whom a federal partisan gerrymandering claim was brought couldn't remove the case to federal court. That's because, per Rucho, no federal court would have jurisdiction over the claim. And second, if a state court reached its decision on federal and state grounds, the decision's nonreviewability by the Supreme Court would be even clearer. In that case, there would be an adequate and independent state law basis for the decision.

--
Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos
Professor of Law
Herbert and Marjorie Fried Research Scholar
University of Chicago Law School
nsteph at uchicago.edu<mailto:nsteph at uchicago.edu>
(773) 702-4226
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/stephanopoulos<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.law.uchicago.edu_faculty_stephanopoulos&d=DwMFaQ&c=HPMtquzZjKY31rtkyGRFnQ&r=5f6POwjrH_vnsYmoF-4bLjJfKWN5xS43XQSvIUnmNR4&m=ogVKeQ0nI4GVhAPtGwquA8E75OaxvAJ9K9An08BAFIg&s=kojyCjN3xYjI1Rz_Dfa2xUWmlWKu00ly7HgM6CzgaHQ&e=>
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