New Jersey Republicans have filed a formal challenge to the new congressional redistricting map with the New Jersey Supreme Court.
A copy of today’s filing can be viewed here.
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The new map makes NJ-07 (occupied by Democrat incumbent Tom Malinowski) is now slightly more Republican, but a few other previously competitive districts (NJ-03, NJ-05, and NJ-11) got bluer.
Republicans took issue with the nakedly arbitrary rationale underpinning the map espoused by former Justice John Wallace, the appointed tiebreaker.
“Both delegations adequately applied our standards to their map,” Wallace said when his tiebreaking decision was announced. “In the end, I decided to vote for the Democratic map simply because the last redistricting map was drawn by the Republicans.”
Wallace’s comments are now forming a core prong of the GOP attack.
“This reasoning established that New Jersey’s congressional redistricting through
2032 – and all of its significant implications for federal representation – were reduced to a
predetermined decision that a Democratic map must prevail because Republicans “won” last time,” the Republican filing explains. “This action by the Independent Member, and in turn the NJRC, undermines the constitutional structure of the NJRC and fails to satisfy any potential standard of judicial review held applicable under New Jersey law, including being arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.”
Republicans hope a new transparent process will lead to a better map.
“The redistricting process was designed to be competitive and fair, to produce the best and most responsive map for every New Jersey voter. The 13th member, Supreme Court appointed Chairman John Wallace, led a befuddled redistricting process that only ever gave one party the opportunity to succeed and robbed New Jersey taxpayers of a voice,” said GOP Redistricting Chairman Doug Steinhardt in a statement. “Unfortunately, over 4 million registered New Jersey voters got cheated. It’s against that backdrop that we launch our first legal challenge to Chairman John Wallace’s arbitrary decision to adopt the Democrats’ gerrymandered incumbency protection map. The Republican map was better for the people of New Jersey on every metric, from competitive districts to keeping communities of interest intact. We owe it to every voter in New Jersey to do better than Chairman Wallace’s “they won last time” logic.”
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