COURTS TO DECIDE ON POLITICAL MAPS
Wisconsin case is key as residents of redrawn districts sue for changes
Beth Lawn’s neighborhood of modest duplexes has more in common with the rest of this struggling, crime- ridden city on the Delaware River next to Philadelphia than it does with the Amish farms of Lancaster County 50 miles away.
But the 71- year- old grandmother awoke one morning to find she had been moved from Pennsylvania’s 1st Congressional District to the 7th, a labyrinthine monstrosity that winds its way through five counties.
“I have a vote, but it really doesn’t count for anything,” Lawn says.
Jerry DeWolf had a similar experience in Maryland when his largely rural 6th Congressional District, home to 40 miles of the Appalachian Trail, was stretched to include wealthy suburbs of Washington. He wasn’tmoved out, but a new congressman wasmoved in.
Both Lawn and DeWolf were victims of partisan gerrymandering — purposeful line- drawing by state lawmakers to maximize their political party’s strength in Congress and state legislatures and weaken their opponents. In Lawn’s case, Pennsylvania Republicans drew the maps. In DeWolf’s, it was Maryland Democrats.
But they didn’t take the creative penmanship sitting down. Both are plaintiffs in lawsuits challenging the lines, which gave Republicans 13 of Pennsylvania’s 18 congressional districts and Democrats seven out of eight in Maryland.
As the Supreme Court prepares to hear a landmark challenge to Wisconsin’s partisan gerrymandering in October, opponents of the process in other states are waging legal and constitutional battles that also could reach the nation’s highest court.
A three- judge panel declined in a 2- 1 decision Thursday to enter a preliminary injunction declaring the Maryland district unconstitutional. The court also put further proceedings on hold pending the outcome of the Supreme Court case. Lawyers for the challengers said they would appeal the lower court decision to the high court.
Every 10 years in most states, the rules for drawing district lines for Congress and state legislatures are changed by the party or parties in power. If that power is shared — or, in a few states including California, if the process is governed by a commission — the lines might be drawn fairly. More often, oneparty rule leads to partisan advantage.
The Supreme Court has ruled on multiple occasions that race cannot be amajor factor in the way lines are drawn, but it has yet to set a standard for howmuch politics is too much.
“The Supreme Court hasn’t really even defined what gerrymandering is,” saysMichael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.
Two years ago, however, a narrowmajority of justices ruled that states can try to remove partisan politics from the process by creating commissions to take the job away fromlegislators.
In those legislators’ hands, software programs have perfected the art of linedrawing for partisan advantage. Republicans, in particular, seized on the process in 2012 after gaining nearly 700 seats in legislatures two years earlier, which gave them control of both houses in 25 states.
Wisconsin is one of several battleground states in which Republicans and Democrats fought to a virtual draw in last year’s presidential election. But because Republicans control the legislature, they designed election districts in 2012 that have given them a nearly 2to- 1 advantage in the state Assembly ever since.
A federal district court ruled 2- 1 last year that those districts discriminated against Democratic voters “by impeding their ability to translate their votes into legislative seats.” It demanded that the legislature draw new district lines by this November, but the Supreme Court blocked that requirement while it considers the state’s appeal. Oral argument in the case is set for Oct. 3.
Fueling challengers’ hopes is the existence of several data- driven models to measure election results against other factors. One of them — the “efficiency gap” — counts the number of “wasted” votes for winning candidates in districts packed with the opposition party’s voters, as well as for losing candidates in districts where opposition party voters were scattered.
Several other states could be affected by the outcome of theWisconsin case:
uLawsuits are on hold in North Carolina, where the Supreme Court has struck down some congressional and state legislative districts because of their reliance on racial demographics. The state’s congressional delegation includes 10 Republicans and three Democrats.
uOhio voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2015 to reduce gerrymandering of state legislative districts. Another one focusing on the state’s 12- 4 GOP tilt in Congress could reach the ballot next year. The state’s Democratic Party chairman has threatened a lawsuit if the Supreme Court strikes down Wisconsin’s districts.
uMichigan activists are pursuing a ballot initiative to create a non- partisan redistricting commission for congressional and legislative districts. The former state Democratic chairman plans to sue over maps that have helped Republicans win nine of 14 congressional seats.