Maryland Gerrymandering Case Offers Unique Test to High Court

Keith Bybee, the Vice Dean of Law, Paul E. and Hon. Joanne F. Alper ’72 Judiciary Studies Professor and director of the Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media, talked to Courtroom News Service about the upcoming Supreme Court case Benisek v. Lamone.

Bybee said abandoning these metrics, which Chief Justice John Roberts referred to as “gobbledygook” at the Wisconsin arguments in October, in favor of a more generalized First Amendment claim could be key to nailing down the justices.

“They’re just trying to do this whole Houdini escape-type of move,” Bybee said. “I don’t even have to get into the different metrics of proportionality or disproportionality or wasted votes or any of that stuff. If I can just show that you drew this district to punish Republicans, then that’s a violation of the free-speech rights and association rights of Republicans, and it shifts the burden onto the state to prove that they weren’t.”