Gill v. Whitford is a Supreme Court case that evaluates the concept of extreme political gerrymandering. The Republican leadership within the state of Wisconsin developed a technique to redraw district maps that would keep the Republicans as the majority throughout any voting situation. The redistricting plan was passed through senate and was eventually signed into the law in 2011.Whitford challenged the plan of redistricting as unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering. I believe this case is violating democrats of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment because the redistricting doesn't give democratic voters the equal strength they would need to make their votes count against the Republican party. It also makes me wonder if communitarianism concepts were thought about before the maps were redrawn.
Partisan gerrymandering is the method of redrawing district lines to maximize the power of a certain political party. Although A federal court maintained the plan as not violating the Equal Protection Clause, I believe it does. The Equal Protection Clause explains how no state should deny a person "equal protection of the laws". To my understanding, by intentionally drawing voting maps to ensure that a certain political party stays the majority, is denying the other political parties voters their fair right to vote. This concept is minimizing democratic voter strength across the U.S. but more specifically the state of Wisconsin. The 1st amendment right is also being put into question during this case because the maps could be seen as discrimination against the democratic citizens for their political viewpoint.
In 2004, the Vieth v. Jubelirer case took place which concluded that "an excessive injection of politics (in districting) is unlawful". Of course, there will always be political pressure when drawing out voting maps. Although, the question is when is there too much political pressure or when do things become unfair and unconstitutional? In the Vieth v. Jubelirer case, it was made known that if there was some sort of test to determine when political influence was considered unjust, they would use it to intervene in situations like this. The three-pronged test was introduced to the Court. Before discrediting a redistricting plan, the test needs to be done in order to rule out unconstitutional findings. First, they must find that the map was created because of "discriminatory intent". The second step is to determine that the redistricting could cause a “large and durable discriminatory effect", one great in size and that could affect a party for a hand-full of years. Lastly, it must conclude that there is no way a valid justification for redrawing the maps to take place. The court should use this test to determine when politics in redistricting is too much or unnecessary, and when it becomes to be seen as unjust redistricting. The test was used in this case and it was determined that the map was not fair to the Democratic party.
After examining this the Gill v. Whitford court case, I've come to a couple conclusions that could connect the case to class materials. I believe a communitarianism thought is put into play during this court case. Communitarianism asks a basic question; "What do all people, individual people or groups of people have in common, or what unites them?". In this situation, it would be voting. And how every U.S. Citizen under the law has the right to vote and not be discriminated against because of their political view. Community actions are being shown through politics because the majority of people in Wisconsin are Republicans. I think when the redistricting was taking place, the Republicans could have thought by creating a majority group within the maps could unite the citizens with their chosen political party. Although, this isn't what took place. The Democrats obviously felt the Republicans were making these maps to benefit themselves instead of equally benefitting both parties. This also goes hand-and-hand with the fact that maybe democracy thought they were helping society because they were changing the maps to better the citizens' interests in that area. When instead it made a political party have their influence over-power the other.
The Gill v. Whitford case should have ended in the maps being stated as unconstitutional. Voting is a right that is given to every citizen through the constitution and shouldn’t be violated because of new maps drawn promoting one parties standing over the other. Of course things are entirely going to be fair, but looking at the facts, I believe their intent was to discriminate against democrats and diminish their voting strength in the state of Wisconsin. The final decisions on this case are supposed to be made in June 2018, and I hope my conclusion will be the reality. Although, I don’t believe judges should be in charge of drawing the maps. The courts should have nothing to do with the political side of cases like this. They need a neutral party to determine what map is the least bias.