Our president, J. Christian Adams, penned an op-ed in the New York Post explaining why California’s Proposition 50—which redraws congressional maps using race—is illegal and wrong.
Two lawsuits are challenging the maps adopted by Prop. 50, both alleging violations of different parts of the Constitution. The first of the two cases to reach the Supreme Court, Tangipa v. Newsom, arrived there on a rocket, after an accelerated mini-trial last December.
The plaintiffs in Tangipa claimed that the state officials who drew the new map did so with the specific intent of grouping people by race. That, the plaintiffs said, was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment — the classic basis for claims against racial discrimination.
But a three-judge federal district court ruled against the claim that the map was enacted with illegal racial predominance.
The federal court also said the Prop. 50 referendum granted absolution to any illegal racial tactics baked into the map.