Rappahannock News: Rappahannock lawyer to argue Supreme Court case on gerrymandering

Date
Expert

I  [Kit Goldfarb] recently had the opportunity to talk to lawyer Paul Smith about voting issues in Virginia and other states, especially the issue of gerrymandering. Smith, who divides his time between Flint Hill and Washington, D.C., is working on a number of important cases addressing voting rights, most notably an upcoming case before the Supreme Court addressing the issue of partisan gerrymandering in Wisconsin.

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I [Paul Smith] came close to overturning a partisan gerrymander 13 years ago in a case called Vieth v. Jubelirer, which addressed gerrymandering in Pennsylvania. Four justices said we should win, four said we should lose, and Justice Kennedy broke the tie in a separate opinion that said partisan gerrymandering is a terrible thing but he didn’t think we had supplied a sufficiently clear test for identifying maps that go over the line. We hope that some new social science tests, developed since 2004, will convince him and four other Justices that it is time to put a stop to extreme gerrymanders.

Read the full interview