Tag: in-the-news

European Cars Are Spying on Their Drivers. The Same Tech Could Be Coming to the U.S.


A photo of a man's eyes seen through a rear-view mirror | Photo: Kovina Duric/Unsplash

European cars are now tasked with more than just moving people from one locale to another. A new safety regulation that applies to the 27 countries in the European Union (E.U.) requires automobiles to spy on their passengers too.

As of July 7, all new passenger vehicles sold in the E.U. had to come equipped with “advanced driver distraction warning” systems that watch for signs of “distraction” and, upon detecting them, issue a visual and an audio or tactile warning. Cars will warn drivers whose gaze drifts for more than three to six seconds, depending on their speed.

To comply with this mandate, cars will have to fix cameras on drivers’ faces at all times, turning private motor vehicles into efficient surveillance systems. The equipment is supposed to operate as a “closed-loop system,” meaning it “shall only continuously record and retain data necessary for the system to function and operate.” But it is not clear how that rule will be enforced.

Beyond privacy concerns, some critics worry that the system itself will become a dangerous distraction, issuing warnings every time a driver changes the radio station or glances at a passenger. Others have complained that the requirement will increase auto costs.

Car manufacturers can allow drivers to temporarily disable either the monitoring system or its warnings, although they must come back on every time the car is restarted. For now, the systems are required only to warn drivers who are deemed distracted, not to take over the car and stop it from moving.

Similar systems could be coming to U.S. cars next—with a twist. Once implemented, a mandate included in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will require that cars come equipped with a kill switch, and it is unlikely that drivers will be allowed to disable it.

That law requires automakers to equip all new motor vehicles sold in the U.S. with “advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology.” These systems, it says, should “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired” and/or “passively and accurately detect” excessive blood alcohol content (BAC), then “prevent or limit motor vehicle operation” by those deemed impaired.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was supposed to develop specific rules for such systems by 2024, but it has not done so yet, perhaps because no one seems sure how “passive and accurate” BAC-detection technology would work. The agency now aims to finalize the rules by 2027, after which automakers would have some time to implement the new technology.

In June, the NHTSA sought public comment on a proposal to conduct “a single, one-time experimental research study” aimed at developing and evaluating a “prototype” driver monitoring system. The goal, it said, is a system that “fuses data gathered from driver attention (e.g., gaze location), physiological state (e.g., heart rate variability), vehicle kinematics (e.g., lateral lane position) and environmental sensors (e.g., time to collision).”

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Judge Sutton on “The Three Faces of American Constitutional Law”

This past Wednesday, Jeffrey Sutton, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, delivered the annual Sumner Canary Memorial Lecture at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law on “The Three Faces of American Constitutional Law.”

The lecture drew upon some of Judge Sutton’s scholarship and writing on the significance of state constitutional law, and how that can influence federal constitutional law.

 

During his remarks, Judge Sutton also discussed the Supreme Court’s most recent term, and its handling of challenges to Trump Administration policies. This portion of his remarks were covered by Bloomberg:

The US Supreme Court’s record on cases involving Donald Trump shows the conservative supermajority isn’t in lockstep with the Republican president, the Sixth Circuit’s outgoing chief judge said. . . .

Sutton . . . called the court’s last term “so remarkable” in the face of a president exercising a “fairly aggressive” amount of power.

He noted the administration lost several times at the court. . . .

It “makes me proud to be a lawyer and proud to be a judge,” Sutton said, because he can “guarantee” the administration would’ve won the cases it lost if those matters were put to the Republican-controlled Congress.

“The insight is, well, whatever these Republican appointees are doing, you can’t call it pure politics, because if it was pure politics, they would act just like the Republican Congress,” the judge said.

“There’s something judges are doing, even in this moment where we’re skeptical of the Supreme Court, skeptical of federal judges, maybe state judges. They’re still doing something that you have to call different from party and elected politics,” Sutton added.

As longtime readers know, I was a member of the CWRU law faculty for twenty-five years and, during much of that time (2008-2025), I curated the Canary lecture series. It is good to see the tradition continues. Prior Canary lectures are indexed here.

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Can the Feds Ban You From Making Liquor in Your Own Home?


Photo of a small distilling setup | Photo: DPST/Newscom

John Ream is trying to do something that should be straightforward: distill his own alcohol. Since the Founding of our country, Americans have sought to distill spirits on their own property for personal consumption. Nearly every famous Founding Father—from George Washington to James Madison to Patrick Henry—distilled spirits on their land, and in modern times, activities like homebrewing have been legalized for decades.

For over a century and a half, however, home distilling has been illegal. The Supreme Court could soon step in.

The trouble dates back about a century and a half ago. In 1868, Congress made it a crime to use or possess a still or boiler for the purpose of distilling spirits “in any dwelling house, or in any shed, yard, or inclosure connected with such dwelling house.” The purported reason for the ban was to facilitate collecting tax revenue from authorized commercial distillers. While hobby distillers have long criticized this federal distilling ban, it is now receiving renewed attention, particularly in terms of what it says about the federal government’s power in America today.

In 2024, Ream, with the help of the Buckeye Institute, challenged the federal distilling prohibition. After all, if Congress can prohibit Ream from making a product for personal consumption within his own home, where would the federal government’s power end?

In response, the federal government has advanced two main arguments to defend the ban: first, that the ban is authorized under Congress’ Article I taxing power, and second, that it’s permissible under the Interstate Commerce Clause, which allows Congress to regulate commerce “among the several states.”

Under the government’s theory, these two clauses—in conjunction with the Constitution’s Necessary and Proper Clause, which permits Congress to enact all laws that are “necessary and proper” to carry into effect its enumerated powers—give it the authority to prohibit Ream from operating a small home still for the personal consumption of spirits.

Earlier this year, two federal circuit court decisions reached differing conclusions on the distilling ban. In the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, Ream lost, with the court buying the federal government’s claim that it can prohibit home distilling under the taxation power and the Necessary and Proper Clause. In a companion case in the 5th Circuit, however, the government’s taxation theory was rejected.

Given that these two decisions have teed up a so-called “circuit split,” it’s widely expected that the high court could step in to make a final determination. But while the government’s troubling taxation power argument in these cases has received ample coverage—including in these pages—relatively little has been written about the government’s back-up defense centered on the Commerce Clause.

Neither lower court directly weighed in on the Commerce Clause. But the government’s alternative defense is technically still alive on appeal and could be resolved by the Supreme Court. A decision on the issue could be the most important Commerce Clause holding since NFIB v. Sebelius (2012), in which the Court ruled that the individual mandate under the Affordable Care Act was not a valid exercise of congressional power under the Commerce Clause (though the Court ultimately upheld the mandate via different means). Americans interested in federalism should hope that the Supreme Court seizes the opportunity before it to reimpose limits on the federal government’s interstate commerce power.

The heart of that debate can be traced back to the Court’s notorious 1942 decision in Wickard v. Filburn, which held that a farmer named Roscoe Filburn could be prohibited from growing wheat for home consumption. The Court adopted what became known as the “aggregation principle,” arguing that if, on aggregate, farmers like Filburn were allowed to grow wheat for their own consumption, this could have a substantial effect on interstate commerce (since those farmers would presumably be substituting their own wheat for purchases on the open market).

While Wickard stretched the Commerce Clause far beyond its original understanding, it at least dealt with production on a sizable farm. (Filburn grew 11.9 extra acres of wheat for home consumption).

The 2005 ruling in Gonzales v. Raich, however, expanded the Commerce Clause to the breaking point.

In Raich, the Supreme Court used the Commerce Clause to uphold the federal government’s authority to criminalize the production of homegrown cannabis. According to the Court, Congress could regulate purely local activities that are part of an economic “class of activities” that have a “substantial effect on interstate commerce.”

The problem with this analysis is that it substitutes the broader concept of “economic activity” for what the Constitution actually says—that Congress can regulate “commerce” among the several states. While Founding era usage of the term “commerce” distinguished it from the production or manufacture of a product, the Court labeled production and manufacture as “quintessentially economic” and therefore within the ambit of an elastic interpretation of the Commerce Clause.

This functionally rewrote the Constitution’s text by deleting the word “commerce” and replacing it with “economics,” a far broader term. If Ream distills his own liquor, the theory holds, then he may be less likely to buy liquor on the open market. And if more would-be home distillers follow his lead, then there could be a “substantial effect” on interstate commerce.

With that reading, it’s hard to see where the federal government’s power would end here. In an amicus brief before the Supreme Court, my Manhattan Institute colleagues Ilya Shapiro and Trevor Burrus point out that this same reasoning would theoretically reach “virtually every other household activity,” giving the feds authority to regulate “all ordinary household life.”

A homegrown herb garden, for instance, could result in its planter purchasing fewer herbs at the grocery store. A stay-at-home parent could prevent a family from hiring paid child care. A homeschooling family might forego potential tuition payments at a nearby private school. Taken to its logical conclusion, the Court’s analysis could justify federal intrusion into each of these spheres of domestic life, thereby erasing any limits on the federal government’s Commerce Clause power altogether.

Ream’s case, in that vein, provides the current Court the chance to overturn Raich and clarify that Congress’ Commerce Clause authority does have meaningful limits. (Of note, doing so would not require the Court to overturn older precedents, like Wickard).

The Supreme Court may likely hear Ream’s case. It is less clear if it will weigh in on the Commerce Clause. Americans wishing for a limited government should hope that it does.

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Trump Said He Would Rid the Kennedy Center of ‘Woke.’ He Injected His Own Politics Instead.


Construction lifts and tarps partially obscuring the Kennedy Center | Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

When President Donald Trump announced a takeover of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts last year, he claimed to be fighting a specific sort of cultural rot at the Washington, D.C., institution. “We don’t need woke at the Kennedy Center,” he said in February 2025. “So I’ll be there until such time as it gets to be running right.”

The president abandoned that in May 2026, after a federal judge ruled that the center was illegally renamed after Trump. Trump’s remedy for a “woke” Kennedy Center was to replace one alleged strain of political capture with another.

The center operates in a gray zone between the public and private sectors. Taxpayers fund building maintenance, operations, security, and repairs. Private donors and ticket sales, meanwhile, are the main source of money for programming. Originally known as the National Cultural Center, the venue was renamed by Congress in 1964 to honor President John F. Kennedy after his assassination. Memorials to former presidents are not unprecedented. Yet naming an arts institution after a politician was itself a political act, as was using taxpayer money to create it in the first place.

Trump is a singular character. But he has provided an example, however cartoonish, of what can happen when you give the public sector control over something that is inherently a private endeavor. The vast majority of Americans will never set foot inside the “national cultural center.” Why are they paying for it? And why does someone like Trump have any say over it?

The takeover was predictably disastrous. Ticket sales plummeted, artists canceled performances en masse, and donations reportedly declined. “It is our desire to perform in our home at the Kennedy Center,” Washington National Opera artistic director Francesca Zambello, who said donor confidence had “shattered,” told The Guardian last year. “But if we cannot raise enough money, or sell enough tickets in there, we have to consider other options.” The company left the Kennedy Center soon after.

In August 2025, at the height of the takeover, Parade arrived at the Kennedy Center. The musical tells the story of Leo Frank, a man whom historians widely agree was wrongly convicted of murder. After his death sentence was commuted to life in prison, he was lynched by vigilantes.

Parade was relocated to the center’s Eisenhower Theater from its opera house, which is more than twice the size, amid weak ticket sales. The show is a powerful exploration of antisemitism, media malpractice, racial dynamics in the South, and tribalism—the type of complicated story that is tailor-made to transcend partisan fractures. At Trump’s Kennedy Center, it played to a sparsely filled house.

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Court Upholds $7.85M Verdict for Employees Fired for Refusing to Get COVID-19 Vaccine

An excerpt from the long opinion today in Lewis-Williams v. S.F. Bay Area Rapid Transit Dist., decided by Judge Ryan Nelson, joined by Judges Johnnie Rawlinson and Bridget Bade:

San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District seeks to overturn a jury verdict of $7,824,580 to six former employees for Title VII violations for failure to accommodate their sincere religious objections to a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Because sufficient evidence supports the jury’s verdict, we affirm….

Title VII requires employers to “reasonably accommodate” religious objectors’ sincere requests for exemptions from neutral job requirements that conflict with the objectors’ religion, unless the employer can show that the exemption would create “undue hardship.” That’s Congress’s choice, made in 1972, and in my view there are good arguments against mandating such religious exemptions from neutral rules, but Congress did indeed so mandate. And here, the court held, that the jury was entitled to reject the employer’s undue hardship argument:

It is undisputed that the Six Former Employees carried their burden of showing a prima facie case that BART failed to accommodate their religious objections to the vaccination requirement. The propriety of [setting aside the verdict as inconsistent with the law] therefore turns on whether BART carried its burden of showing that Plaintiffs’ religious objections could not be accommodated without undue hardship.

BART’s argument … proceeds in two steps. First, BART argues that unrebutted testimony established that (1) public health guidance at the time advised that vaccination was the most effective measure for preventing the spread of COVID-19, (2) BART relied on this guidance in determining that it would be unacceptable from a safety and operational standpoint for unvaccinated employees to perform in-person work, and (3) its reliance on such guidance is dispositive for purposes of the undue-hardship determination because a religious accommodation that imposes an increased safety risk for others constitutes an undue hardship as a matter of law. Second, BART argues that remote work and unpaid leave—the only accommodations as safe as vaccination—were not reasonable accommodations as a matter of law because the only rational conclusion based on the evidence introduced at trial was that Plaintiffs could not perform the essential duties of their jobs remotely and any unpaid leave would have been indefinite.

For reasons explained below, we conclude that BART is not entitled to [set aside the verdict]. To prevail on its “undue hardship” defense, BART had to show that the alternatives to vaccination would be not only less safe, but less safe by a “substantial,” “excessive,” or “unjustifiable” margin….

BART argues that any increase in safety risk resulting from an accommodation is an undue hardship. This argument conflicts with the Supreme Court’s holding in Groff that an accommodation does not impose an “undue hardship” unless the burdens would be “substantial,” “excessive,” or “unjustifiable.” Common sense dictates that safety risks, like any other category of risk, are capable of justification…. “Because few, if any, activities in life are risk free, [we] do not ask whether a risk exists, but whether it is significant.” … Accordingly, an employer is not absolved of its burden of proving that an accommodation is unreasonable by merely showing that the accommodation has safety implications. Rather, employers are ordinarily entitled to rely on the views of public health authorities, along with the best “objective, scientific information available” at the time, when making accommodation decisions.

That brings us to the next problem with BART’s argument: the public health guidance that BART relied on is not in the record. BART likewise did not call any of the infectious disease experts or public health officials with whom BART’s pandemic task force consulted when formulating its vaccination policy. Instead, BART put forward the testimony of two after-the-fact litigation experts—Dr. Joseph Lewnard, an infectious disease epidemiologist, and Dr. Nancy McClellan, an industrial hygienist—to establish the state of the public health guidance and the risks BART would be taking by allowing unvaccinated employees to work in person.

Contrary to BART’s contentions, the jury was not required to accept BART’s expert, non-percipient witness testimony as conclusive evidence of the scientific information that drove BART’s decision-making. Moreover, “[e]xpert testimony … is not conclusive upon the trier of fact, even though unimpeached and uncontradicted, since the trier may apply his own experience or knowledge in determining how far to follow the expressed opinion.” The expert testimony thus did not establish that in-person alternatives to BART’s vaccine requirement—masking, social distancing, and other such measures—would be unreasonable accommodations as a matter of law….

The above conclusion, however, is not necessarily fatal to BART’s argument. Even if in-person alternatives to vaccination are not per se unreasonable accommodations in the context of BART’s business, they may still impose an undue hardship considering either the nature of that business, the religious objector’s work duties, or some other factor (or combination of factors).

Our decisions in Petersen and Williams are illustrative. In Petersen, eight firefighters sued their employer for denying them religious accommodations for a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Because the fire department’s business was to provide the public with “emergency, even life-saving, services” and undisputed evidence established that “firefighters work in group settings, interfacing constantly with coworkers and the public, both inside and outdoors” and that the plaintiffs often did not abide by masking and social distancing guidelines, we held that “testing, masking, and social distancing in lieu of vaccination” was not a reasonable accommodation in light of the substantial burdens that would be imposed on the fire department.

Defendants in Petersen also risked serious financial and operational hardships likely to be incurred had they accommodated the firefighters (including potentially losing almost a quarter of their firefighting force to illness and losing a $400,000 annual contract). {By contrast, BART had received millions of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief funds. The jury could reasonably infer that BART used those funds to ensure that it did not engage in mass layoffs during the pandemic. The employees who lost their jobs were the religious dissenters BART failed to accommodate. Thus, a reasonable jury could also have inferred that BART had the resources and excess workforce to accommodate the Six Former Employees without suffering an undue hardship.}

In Williams, nine healthcare professionals sued their employer, “a regional healthcare system that operates eight hospitals throughout the Willamette Valley,” on the same basis—failure to provide accommodations for a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. And in holding that alternative measures to vaccination would impose an “undue hardship” on the conduct of the defendant’s business, we highlighted that the defendant was in the “business of providing safe and effective medical care to the public,” that unvaccinated “frontline [hospital] workers” such as the plaintiffs “faced a unique risk of infection,” and that the nature of the plaintiffs’ work duties “necessitated close contact with either patients or staff” and therefore created an outsized risk of causing staffing issues and undermining the efficacy of patient care.

Those factors are not present here. Unlike the defendants in Petersen and Williams, the focus of BART’s business is not health and safety, but transportation. And unlike the plaintiffs in those cases, the roles occupied by the Six Former Employees before their termination did not require them to be in close, frequent contact with the public or most coworkers:

  • Tonya Lewis-Williams was a “utility worker,” responsible for “clean[ing] up the debris off the platform, the trains, some offices,” and other such places. Lewis-Williams testified that “[m]ost of the time” she was by herself and not in contact with passengers or her co-workers.
  • Bradford Mitchell was a “rolling stock component maintenance superintendent,” responsible for supervising the maintenance of train cars at the Richmond shop. He testified that he had no contact with the public and minimal contact with other BART employees—any necessary in-person meetings with shop employees were conducted in “a large open bay area” with a 40-foot-high ceiling and floor space sufficient to fit eight train cars, and after the pandemic began, meetings took place “[v]ery seldom[ly].”
  • Rosalind Parker was a “customer service clerk,” responsible for selling tickets, bike locker rentals, and company store items, among other things. In her job, she worked alongside four co-workers and interacted with the public from behind a bullet-proof window. Her job required no “direct contact” with customers—money, tickets, and other such items were collected through a slot, and communication with the customers occurred through a microphone. After the pandemic started, BART installed large polyglass partitions that separated her workspace from the other three clerks.
  • Szu-Cheng Sun was a “computer electronic technician,” responsible for “install[ing], maintain[ing], and repair[ing] computer-related equipment.” Sun testified that “90 percent of [his] work could be done alone or remotely,” that he had “no interaction with patrons or riders at all,” and that only in “rare instances” presenting “[s]afety concerns” would he have to work alongside a coworker.
  • Raymond Lockett was an “operations supervisor liaison,” responsible for meeting and escorting contractors around BART facilities (as well as BART employees who needed access to a facility they did not ordinarily have access to) and ensuring that such individuals did not create any safety concerns or other liabilities for BART. Lockett testified that his work was “primarily outside” and generally at a safe distance from other individuals.
  • Ryan Rivera was a “[s]torekeeper,” responsible for making requisitions and keeping inventory, among other duties. Rivera testified that, as a “senior lead,” he was relieved of all “physical duties” associated with his position and could have worked alone in his isolated office, which had “its own ventilation system with windows and filters.”

Nor does BART point to any trial evidence suggesting that the Six Former Employees would have been unable or unwilling to wear a mask or take other appropriate measures aimed at preventing transmission. Accordingly, the jury could have reasonably concluded that the burdens imposed by accommodating the Six Former Employees’ religious objections would not have been substantial, excessive, or unjustifiable.

We are especially hesitant to upend a jury verdict that rests on an “undue hardship” determination. The “undue hardship” determination is a “fact-specific inquiry” that “takes into account all relevant factors in the case at hand.” Fact-specific determinations are generally best suited for jury resolution. “The jury, after all, represents the conscience of the community.”

Given these features of the “undue hardship” determination, only in cases—like Petersen and Williams—where the excessiveness of the burden imposed “is so obvious that reasonable minds could not differ” is this question “appropriately resolved as a matter of law.” This is not one of those cases. And the jury resolved those factual disputes reasonably, rendering a verdict for the Six Former Employees….

Judge Ryan Nelson also had a separate concurrence generally discussing the Free Exercise Clause; you can see it here.

Gage S. Fender, Matthew McReynolds, and Kevin T. Snider (Pacific Justice Institute) and Susan J. Clouthier and Gage S. Fender (Clouthier Law PLLC) represent plaintiffs.

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Supreme Court Blocks Missouri’s Messy, Trump-Backed Gerrymandering Fight


Missouri Statehouse | Wayne Mckown/Dreamstime

On Thursday, the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling in Missouri’s controversial redistricting battle, backing the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision that the state could not use a congressional map drafted by the state’s Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe last year. 

The Supreme Court’s decision, which blocked a federal court order, is a blow to President Donald Trump’s gerrymandering push, which began last August when the president urged numerous red states across the country to modify their congressional district lines to favor Republicans in the midterm elections. Kehoe was happy to oblige, swiftly drawing up a new map that the Missouri Legislature approved during a special session in September 2025.

People Not Politicians, an anti-gerrymandering activist group, promptly challenged the new map, organizing a signature drive and petition. They collected over 300,000 signatures from across the state and deposited them with Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins in December. Under Missouri’s state constitution, the people “reserve power to approve or reject by referendum any act of the general assembly.” So, once Hoskins’ office had verified the signatures, implementation of the new map would be paused until a statewide vote in November could determine the gerrymander’s fate. 

People Not Politicians simultaneously sued the state, claiming the Legislature lacked authority to draw up new maps between census years and that the new map violated mandates for district compactness. The Supreme Court of Missouri disagreed, ruling in March and in May that the new map was valid.

With the group’s lawsuits falling through, all hope for overturning the new map seemed to hinge on the referendum. However, months after the petition’s deposition, Hoskins had still not certified all the signatures. The Missouri Independent reported in May that Hoskins “said he intends to use the entire time available” up to the mandated deadline—the day of the primary election—before he would recognize the referendum as valid.

As foretold, Hoskins waited until the literal final hour before the deadline to conclude that “the referendum itself is null and void by virtue of the fact that it is unconstitutional.” 

People Not Politicians sued again, challenging Hoskins’ last-minute revelation about the referendum’s constitutionality. But by then the August primary had already been conducted using the gerrymandered district lines. 

After a swift appeals process, the Supreme Court of Missouri decided against Hoskins on September 3, writing (not without some obvious irritation) “the referendum petition was legal, sufficient, and timely, and the secretary incorrectly concluded otherwise.” The old map, the court ruled, was to remain “in full force and effect for the November 2026 general election.”

The next day, Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, acting on the behalf of Hoskins, appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, asking for a stay on the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision, a move that former Missouri Solicitor General Jim Layton called “unprecedented.” 

In his new appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Hoskins said that the state Supreme Court could not throw out the new map because a federal election had already been conducted using it and returning to the old map would confuse voters and violate federal law.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Hoskins’ request for a stay on Tuesday, effectively echoing the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision. Just minutes after the Court’s denial on Tuesday, Trump-appointed federal judge Stephen Clark issued a restraining order in a different lawsuit, which blocked Missouri from “using, publishing, distributing, or mandating the use of any congressional district map other than the [new] map for the November [election].”

Choosing the court order he agreed with, Hoskins contacted Missouri election officials Tuesday night endorsing the use of the new map. For this, Hoskins was summoned before the Missouri Supreme Court on Thursday to justify that his actions were not in contempt of the court’s order. 

Just minutes before the contempt hearing began in Missouri, the U.S. Supreme Court paused Clark’s restraining order while litigation in the appeals court continued. The Missouri Supreme Court found that Hoskins’ past behavior was in contempt of its order, but that his culpability would be purged if he stopped using the new map. Logistical challenges remain, but as of Thursday afternoon, Hoskins’s office was “directing local election authorities to use the 2022 congressional map,” The New York Times reports. 

Missouri’s gerrymander is not an isolated case, nor is it a one-sided issue. Over the past two years, nine states have drafted gerrymandered congressional maps. Eight of those states have Republican-controlled legislatures. The ninth is California, which, at the initiation of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, approved a statewide gerrymander by referendum.

While Trump is responsible for much of these undertakings, “the broader trend [of gerrymandering] predates Trump, and coincides with a general decay of civic norms and customs and a heightening of politics as a venture in trying to crush the enemy,” Walter Olson, a legal scholar at the Cato Institute, tells Reason.

This push “to crush the enemy” might reward power-hungry politicians hoping to benefit their party, but the losers in all of this are the voters, who have their voice diluted with each further gerrymander. Missouri’s redistricting scheme may have been foiled this year, but eight other states will be using newly gerrymandered maps this November. 

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