POLITICS 02/21/2018 08:16 pm ET Updated 6 hours ago

Pennsylvania GOP Pleads With SCOTUS Again To Let Them Use Gerrymandered Map

Two days after the state Supreme Court issued a new congressional map that would make elections fairer, Republicans are suing.

By Sam Levine

Pennsylvania Republicans again asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block Pennsylvania’s new, court-ordered congressional map on Wednesday, marking the latest in a series of attempts to halt a plan that would make congressional elections more competitive in the state by reducing the impact of gerrymandering.

In an emergency application, Pennsylvania House Speaker Michael Turzai (R) and Senate President Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati (R) asked the Supreme Court to prevent the new map from going into effect. They say the state Supreme Court overstepped its authority by drawing a new congressional map.

The GOP challenge comes just two days after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a new congressional map for the state to be used in 2018 and 2020 elections. In January, the court said the congressional map in place since 2011, drawn by Republicans, so severely benefited the GOP that it violated the state’s constitution.

The court gave lawmakers three weeks to reach an agreement on a new map, and when the parties couldn’t do so, the court stepped in to draw its own. Several analyses showed the court’s map will make elections more competitive and give Democrats a better chance of winning seats in districts currently held by the Republicans.

In the emergency application, lawyers for Turzai and Scarnati wrote that the court did not give the lawmakers a “meaningful” chance to draw a new map. The timeline was so compressed, they say, that it “ensured that the court would get to draw the map it wanted, instead of being crafted through the legislative process.”

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