Supreme Court refuses to rule on partisan maps

WASHINGTON — In a setback for political reformers, the Supreme Court refused Monday to strike down partisan gerrymandering as unconstitutional and set aside cases from Wisconsin and Maryland for procedural reasons.

In Wisconsin, several Democratic voters sued to challenge a Republicandrawn election map that assured the GOP would win 60 percent of the seats in the state Assembly, even when the Democrats won a slim majority of the votes statewide.

In Maryland, several Republican voters had challenged a Democratic scheme to redraw a congressional election district so as to defeat a veteran Republican and replace him with a Democrat.

The justices decided unanimously that both cases were flawed. In Gill v. Whitford from Wisconsin, Chief Justice John Roberts said voters had standing to sue only over the make-up of their own voting district, not the statewide map, as the plaintiffs had done.

In the Maryland case, Benisek v. Lamone, the justices agreed that the lower court properly refused to change the districts prior to the 2018 election.

The outcome left the high court largely where it began on gerrymandering: split 4-4 between Democratic- and Republican-appointed justices, and still waiting for Justice Anthony Kennedy to decide when partisan gerrymandering crosses the constitutional line.

The four conservatives believe drawing election districts is inherently a political decision, and courts should stand aside.

The four liberals believe that drawing election districts to ensure one party’s victory violates the basic principles of democracy. “At its most extreme, the practice amounts to rigging elections,” Justice Elena Kagan said Monday in a concurring opinion.

Kennedy has repeatedly said he is troubled by election maps that are drawn for purely partisan advantage, but he has always stopped short of voting to strike down an election district as unconstitutionally partisan. He said nothing Monday, except to join the court’s 9-0 opinion in the Wisconsin case as well as a brief, unsigned decision in the Maryland case.

The court’s failure to rule on the broader issue is a victory of sorts for Republicans and a defeat for Democrats because the GOP has had a big advantage in the closely divided states, largely thanks to partisan gerrymandering done after the 2010 census.

.