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(June 27) – In response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision this morning on partisan gerrymandering, Assistant Majority Leader Chris Kennedy, who serves as the chair of the House State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee, issued the following statement:
“The Supreme Court’s decision today is devastating to our fundamental democratic principle of equal representation under the law, throwing the door wide open for states to advance partisan political gain over the interests of the people,” said Rep. Kennedy. “Over the past few years we have seen the Supreme Court erode the protections provided under the Voting Rights Act, and many states took swift action to restrict voting rights. Now politicians will be able to gerrymander with impunity, diluting the fair representation of underserved communities and drawing legislative maps to benefit their own parties.
“Thankfully, here in Colorado we have established guardrails to help prevent partisan influence in redistricting, but in much of the rest of the country, no such protections exist. It now falls to the states to step up and implement safeguards to ensure that voters pick their elected officials, not the other way around, and our core democracy is protected.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling today essentially declared that federal courts don’t have a role in protecting against political gerrymandering. In November 2018, Colorado voters overwhelmingly approved legislatively-referred Amendments Y and Z to task independent commissions with drawing electoral maps for state legislative and Congressional districts.