PHILADELPHIA _ Top Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers are asking the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to vacate its court order overturning the state's congressional map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander, saying at least one justice in the case was biased.
David Wecht, who was elected as a Democrat to the state high court in 2015, made several disparaging comments about gerrymandering while campaigning for the state Supreme Court seat. Those comments should have disqualified him from participating in the redistricting case, State Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati and House Speaker Mike Turzai said in a filing Friday.
Because Wecht did not recuse himself, the Republicans said, the order should be vacated.
"Justice Wecht's position regarding the 2011 Plan, and, more generally, partisan map drawing were clearly defined and cemented long before this case was initiated," lawyers for Scarnati and Turzai wrote in the filing.
"During his campaign to become a justice of this court and even after his election, Justice Wecht repeatedly expressed his view that the 2011 plan is unfair, unconstitutional and must be eliminated."
The state high court last week threw out the state's congressional map, handing a victory to 18 Democratic voters who had challenged the map as illegally drawn to favor Republicans and discriminate against Democrats. The court ordered a new map redrawn before the primary election in May, prompting immediate criticism from Republican lawmakers who said the court was being partisan and overstepping its bounds.
Days later, Republicans asked the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay in the case, saying the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is essentially legislating from the bench, taking power that the U.S. Constitution gives to state legislatures.
In its filing Friday, Republicans opened a new line of attack on the court.
They provided several quotations from Wecht in their filing:
_ "Let me be very clear: Gerrymandering is an absolute abomination. It is a travesty. It is deeply wrong. ... These districts have been drawn to disenfranchise the majority of Pennsylvanians. And they have been drawn by skilled political operatives, and it needs to stop. There are a million more Democrats in this Commonwealth _ I want to let that sink in _ a million more Democrats in this Commonwealth, but there's a Republican state house, there's Republican state senate, and there are only 5 Democrats in the Congress, as opposed to 13 Republicans. Think about it. Do we need a new Supreme Court? I think you know the answer." (YouTube)
_ "Stop this insane gerrymandering. ... And we are one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation. And people who are disenfranchised by this gerrymandering abomination eventually lose faith and grow more apathetic, why, because their voting power has been vastly diluted and they tend to figure 'well, I can't make a difference, I'll just stay home.'" (lancasteronline.com)
_ "Extreme gerrymandering is an abomination and antithetical to the concept of one person, one vote."(90.5 WESA)
_ "...(I)n 2014, I believe, there were at least more than 200,000 votes for Democratic candidates for U.S. Congress than Republicans and yet we elected 13 Republicans and 5 Democrats, and there are more than 1,000,000 more Democrats. ... I'm not trying to be partisan, but I have to answer your question, frankly�. We have more than a million more democrats in Pennsylvania, we have a state senate and state house that are overwhelmingly Republican. You cannot explain this without partisan gerrymandering. So I don't have a philosophy other than fidelity to our Constitution, and fidelity to our Constitution does not include drawing lines down the middle of streets or separating neighbors from one another. It doesn't include carving up municipalities. Our Constitution and its jurisprudence say that we are not supposed to divide up municipalities except where absolutely necessary, we are supposed to have compact and contiguous, compact and contiguous districts. And I challenge anybody to look at the map of our districts and deem them to be compact and contiguous." (lancasteronline.com)
The Republicans said Wecht also demonstrated his bias during oral argument last month.
"In particular, Justice Wecht repeatedly referred to the 2011 Plan as a 'gerrymander' (a term that has no specific meaning in this Court's case law), signaling that he had already predetermined the issue," they said.
In addition to going after Wecht, the lawmakers signaled they may target Christine Donohue, another Democrat elected to the state Supreme Court in 2015. They cited an article published in 2015 and described Donohue's comments at a judicial campaign forum this way:
"Wecht and Donohue explained how the Pennsylvania Supreme Court appoints the fifth and final member to the Legislative Reapportionment Commission, the group that draws the district lines, if the leaders of the state House and Senate can't agree on a selection.
"The state Supreme Court also reviews any challenges to the district lines drawn by the commission, meaning the court could potentially influence the process twice.
"Donohue said if voters selected all three Democrats on Election Day, all the court would need to do is apply the law.
'And gerrymandering will come to an end,' she said."
That statement, the lawmakers said in the filing, calls Donohue's impartiality into question. While they are not currently calling for Donohue to be disqualified from the case, they are asking she be required to disclose all information that might be relevant to a disqualification claim, including any statements she made regarding gerrymandering or the congressional map.
