The leader of the Pennsylvania state Senate does not intend to cooperate with an order from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court requiring the state legislature to turn over data after the court struck down the Republican-drawn congressional voting map.
A lawyer for Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati sent a letter to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Wednesday notifying it of Scarnati’s intention to defy the order.
The state Supreme Court ruled last week the congressional map drafted by the Republican-led General Assembly in 2011 was a partisan gerrymander and violated the state’s Constitution.
GOP state lawmakers asked the U.S. Supreme Court last week to put the state Supreme Court’s ruling on hold.
“In light of the constitutionality of the court’s orders and the court’s plain intent to usurp the General Assembly’s constitutionally delegated role of drafting Pennsylvania’s congressional districting plan, Senator Scarnati will not be turning over any data identified in the court’s orders,” the letter to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court read.
The initial Jan. 22 order from the state Supreme Court set a Feb. 9 deadline for the state legislature to draw a new congressional map and submit it to Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat.
If the Republican-led General Assembly fails to meet its court-ordered deadline, or if the governor rejects the map, the court will then draw its own map.
In a subsequent order issued Jan. 26, the state Supreme Court said it retained Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford Law School professor, to help the court draw a new congressional map. The court also requested maps and data from the General Assembly.
But lawyers for Scarnati said the state Supreme Court’s initial order striking down the congressional map “deprives legislative respondents of the ability to draft the court-ordered alternate map” because the order neither explained how the 2011 congressional map violated the state constitution, nor described what the state legislature must do to draw a new map that complies with the state constitution.
Scarnati’s lawyers also argued that because the General Assembly lacks this information from the state Supreme Court, the subsequent Jan. 26 order “can only be fairly read to indicate the court’s intention to begin drafting an alternate map well in advance of the deadline the court has established.”
Additionally, they argued that the court’s request for data from the General Assembly signals the court intends to use the information to draft a new congressional map.
