Efforts to limit partisan gerrymandering falter at high court

WASHINGTON — A decadeslong effort to keep politicians from drawing district lines that entrench themselves and their parties in power faltered Monday at the Supreme Court, as justices sidestepped the question of when extreme partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional.

In considering a Republicandrawn map from Wisconsin and a Democratic effort in Maryland, the court had raised the possibility of producing a landmark change in the way the nation’s elections are conducted.

The justices left the door open for future challenges to partisan gerrymanders. But as a result of Monday’s technical resolutions, both states’ maps will be intact for the 2018 elections, and the status quo remains.

The ruling indicates that the court’s pivotal justice, Anthony Kennedy, was not persuaded by the challengers that they had presented a way for courts to determine when partisan efforts so infect a state’s political maps that they violate the Constitution.

“Today’s decision is yet another delay in providing voters with the power they deserve in our democracy,” said Chris Carson, president of the League of Women Voters of the United States. “Partisan gerrymandering is distorting and undermining our representative democracy, giving politicians the power to choose their voters, instead of giving voters the power to choose their politicians.”

While the court regularly polices state redistricting efforts that can harm racial minorities, it has never thrown out a map for partisan gerrymandering. Some justices in the past have said the courts have no role in the process; it is between voters and their representatives.

In Monday’s cases, the court said in an unsigned opinion that the status of the Maryland challenge — there has been no trial in the case — counseled against a definitive ruling. They returned the case to a lower court for more work.

And Chief Justice John Roberts said the plaintiffs in Wisconsin had not shown they were hurt individually by the legislature’s actions, a necessary component for courts to intervene.

“The opinion of the court rests on the understanding that we lack jurisdiction to decide this case, much less to draw speculative and advisory conclusions regarding others,” Roberts wrote for a unanimous court.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote a concurring opinion, joined by the court’s other liberals, that provided a glimpse of what might have been.

She said courts must find their footing to stop a partisan process that is “degrading the nation’s democracy,” and that map-drawing software only makes it easier to draw precise lines.

Kagan laid out a road map for future challenges, including under a test Kennedy has proposed: that partisan redistricting schemes might be judged as punishment for voters because of their past political allegiances, which would violate the First Amendment.