U.S. Chief Justice’s ‘Swing’ Role Shown in Census, Gerrymandering Rulings
U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts cemented his new role as the Supreme Court’s swing vote, angering people on the political left and right in the process, as he decided the outcomes of major rulings on the census and electoral map manipulation, according to a Reuters report.
In two 5-4 votes, Roberts sided with his fellow conservative justices in rejecting challenges to a practice called partisan gerrymandering but joined the court’s liberals in dealing to a damaging blow to President Trump’s plan to add a contentious citizenship question to the 2020 census.
The votes illustrate how Roberts now is the court’s center, a role he inherited following the retirement last year of Justice Anthony Kennedy, writes Reuters’ Lawrence Hurley.
But seeing a chief justice taking the middle road hasn’t gone down well with some “deeply disappointed right-leaning lawyers and pundits who had been counting on near-certain victory from a court now stocked with a pair of Trump-appointed justices handpicked by conservative legal activists,” according to a Politico report.
