''Shapiro v. McManus'', 577 U.S. ___ (2015), was a case in which the

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point ...

clarified when

United States District Court The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district, which each cover one U.S. state or, in some cases, a portion of a state. Each district c ...

judges must refer cases to three-judge panels. In a unanimous opinion written by

Justice Justice, in its broadest sense, is the principle that people receive that which they deserve, with the interpretation of what then constitutes "deserving" being impacted upon by numerous fields, with many differing viewpoints and perspective ...

Antonin Scalia Antonin Gregory Scalia (; March 11, 1936 – February 13, 2016) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectu ...

, the Court ruled that federal district courts are required to refer cases to a three-judge panel when plaintiffs challenge the constitutionality of the apportionment of congressional districts. The case results from citizens in Maryland that had challenged the state's redistricting based on the 2010 Census created by Democratic leaders in the state, leading to Republican voters in the 6th district to find their votes diluted and causing ten-term U.S. Representative

Roscoe Bartlett Roscoe Gardner Bartlett Jr. (born June 3, 1926) is an American politician who was U.S. Representative for , serving from 1993 to 2013. He is a member of the Republican Party and was a member of the Tea Party Caucus. At the end of his tenure in ...

to lose in the 2012 election. The plaintiffs charged that their rights of equal representation and protection under the Article One, Section Two of the U.S. Constitution and

freedom of association Freedom of association encompasses both an individual's right to join or leave groups voluntarily, the right of the group to take collective action to pursue the interests of its members, and the right of an association to accept or decline mem ...

of the

First Amendment First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and reco ...

had been violated. At the

United States District Court for the District of Maryland The United States District Court for the District of Maryland (in case citations, D. Md.) is the federal district court whose jurisdiction is the state of Maryland. Appeals from the District of Maryland are taken to the United States Court ...

, the judge denied the request for a full three-judge hearing, considering that the plaintiff's claims were insubstantial; the decision was summarily affirmed in the Fourth Circuit Appeals Court. The plaintiffs subsequently challenged the District Court's ruling via petition to the Supreme Court on the basis that the dismissal did not properly consider their claims. The Supreme Court agreed, ordering a full three-judge hearing at the District Court. The hearing at District Court led to another Supreme Court case, ''

Benisek v. Lamone ''Benisek v. Lamone'', 585 U.S. ____ (2018), and ''Lamone v. Benisek'', 588 U.S. ____ (2019), were a pair of decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States in a case dealing with the topic of partisan gerrymandering arising from the 2011 Dem ...

'', accepted in December 2017 and heard in March 2018, in which the Supreme Court found that the District Court's denial of an injunction was not improper, but otherwise did not weigh in on the merits of the

gerrymandering In representative democracies, gerrymandering (, originally ) is the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries with the intent to create undue advantage for a party, group, or socioeconomic class within the constituency. The m ...

aspects..

References

External links

* {{USRedistrictinglaw United States civil procedure case law United States Supreme Court cases United States Supreme Court cases of the Roberts Court 2015 in United States case law

See also

References

External links