Comments on: Councilman Greenfield Blasts New Proposed City Council Maps

By: akuperma

akuperma — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 20:24:55 +0000

#3- The Supreme Court never reached the issue in the major case in the area, in part since the Jews’ lawyers decided to argue on racial rather than ethnic and religious grounds. It’s quite possible that gerrymandering designing to “punish” a religious or ethnic minority might be illegal and either Federal or New York law (one gets to argue the matter under each system). The smoking gun might be legislative history showing that frum Jews were being deliberately discriminated against (the previous case was on other issues since arguably they were gerrymander to reward Blacks and Hispanics for being good party stalwarts – not punishing Jews for being uppidty).

By: WE ARE ALL BROTHERS

WE ARE ALL BROTHERS — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:21:06 +0000

we actually usually vote democrat.

By: Gadolhadorah

Gadolhadorah — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 18:03:35 +0000

Absent some historical evidentiary showing that a particular class had been deliberately marginalized through gerrymandering, a court will not intervene so that “frum yidden” have more than one majority district. First of all, religion has NEVER been recognized as a “protected class”. Further, what is a frum yid? How does a court define residents who are shomrei torah umitzvos? Should we have separate districts for chassideshe and litvashe residents? Should the Zalmanites be entitled to recognitino separately for political purposes from teh Aronites?

By: zachweix

zachweix — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 18:02:07 +0000

Or, they can all just move to Israel where they will have an entire city council that can be Jewish!

By: akuperma

akuperma — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 17:39:34 +0000

Unless one can convince the Supreme Court to hold that ethnic and religious discrimination in gerrymandering is illegal – he loses. The Democrats have good reason to want to try to deprive Jews of political influence – we disagree with them.