“Incredible, unstoppable titan of terror!” Those words advertising the 1954 film Godzilla could be the poster child for a new, freakish giant stretching across the sleeping fields of Virginia. In a court near you now stands The Lobster, a monster more than 100 miles long. The only saving grace is that this creature only devours Republicans, leaving about half the state with virtually no representation in Congress.
Virginia was a quiet, rural state before the creature appeared. It was considered the gold standard among states that rejected gerrymandering, with fairly divided districts in a state split right down the middle. A governor was then elected, Governor Abigail Spanberger, who assured voters that she was firmly against gerrymandering and then immediately called for the most radical gerrymander map in the country after being elected.
The mad scientists who created this monster, now called the 7th Congressional District, created other oddly shaped monstrosities intended to reduce a fairly evenly divided representation in the state to a 10-1 advantage for the Democrats.
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While a lower court rejected the plan, another district judge recently looked at the Lobster and sought cover. Richmond Circuit Court Judge Tracy Thorne-Begland appears to echo the 2019 opinion of the Godzilla creators that “sometimes… the only way to heal our wounds is to make peace with the demons who created them.”
What is most striking about the opinion is how irrelevant Virginia’s constitutional and statutory standards are in the analysis. State law, among other things, requires districts to be “compact,” not shaped like a crustacean. The Constitution states that districts “shall consist of contiguous and compact territory and shall be so constituted as to afford, so far as practicable, representation in proportion to the population of the district.”
Without any humor, the court dryly states that the new districts are “undoubtedly less compact than the districts they replace. They are certainly partisan gerrymanders. They move both representatives and voters into new, oddly shaped districts.”
In one of the most bizarre rulings, the court explains, “reasonable and objective persons came to different conclusions about the effects of the 2026 maps. The issue of compactness is quite debatable.”
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Fairly debatable about compactness? It is a gigantic lobster that stretches over 100 miles. It’s a real “Godzilla!” spotting. But Judge Thorne-Begland just shrugged and walked away.
While the court is not the first to note that these terms are subject to varying interpretations, the “subjectivity” cited by the court renders the standard largely meaningless. The compactness requirement has been described as “somewhat abstract” with no “bright line” test. Vesilind v Va. State Bd. of the elections, 295 Va. 427, 444-45 (2018). However, this approach would effectively remove language that has any substantive interpretive meaning.
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Judge Thorne-Begland essentially states that it is not his job to fight the lobster: “This Court knows its role is clear. Its purpose is not to judge the wisdom of government policy, nor to participate in policymaking from the bench.”
There are numerous problems with the Virginia gerrymandering measure, from its vague language to the special sessions used to craft it. However, Thorne-Begland exhibits the same reaction as the Japanese citizens in Tokyo who ran screaming from the creature’s approach as it crushed everything in its path.
It is not clear how the Virginia Supreme Court will rule on the issue. Many of us who have long opposed bipartisan gerrymandering hope they will toe the line and reject this effort. It will take a lot of courage. These judges rely on a democratically controlled legislature for their positions.
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The Supreme Court can do what Justice Thorne-Begland did and simply run away. They may view previous standards and procedures as ambitious or irrelevant. Or they can act as a real check on legislative excesses and abuses.
Ultimately, the Japanese horror writers got one thing right: “Godzilla and Biollante are not monsters. It’s the unscrupulous scientists who create them who are monsters.”
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