A panel of three federal judges declined Friday to immediately block Pennsylvania’s new congressional map from taking effect, leaving it in place for now.
Ruling on a motion filed by Republicans opposed to map, the judges fast tracked a hearing on whether it should intervene in the case.
The claims of injury from the Republican lawmakers are “not so exigent as to justify” immediately blocking the map through issuing a temporary restraining order, the judges wrote, especially because they favor giving “an opportunity for all parties to be heard.”
This newest legal challenge to the map was filed Thursday by two state senators and eight Republican U.S. Congressmen from Pennsylvania. They asked the courts to consider whether the state Supreme Court, by imposing the new congressional map, violated the U.S. Constitution’s elections clause, which gives power to state legislatures to run elections.
A similar request, filed by state Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati (R., Jefferson) and House Speaker Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny) is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Republican lawmakers have fought the Pennsylvania Supreme Court order for weeks, ever since the state high court overturned the state’s congressional map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander and ordered a new one redrawn. On Monday, the state Supreme Court imposed its own map, prompting the two federal challenges from Republican lawmakers.
First Published: February 23, 2018, 11:27 p.m.
