Supreme Court punts on partisan gerrymandering

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court sidestepped a potentially historic ruling Monday that would have blocked states from drawing election maps intended to help one political party dominate the other, but the issue may return in 2019.

The justices unanimously found procedural faults with challenges brought by Democratic voters in Wisconsin and Republicans in Maryland. That could open the door for a third case from North Carolina next term.

The justices said challengers to the design of 99 state Assembly districts in Wisconsin cannot tackle the entire map at once but must target their specific districts. Rather than dismissing the case, they agreed to give the challengers another chance in lower courts. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch would have dismissed the challenge outright.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the Wisconsin decision, said the case was flawed because it was about “group political interests, not individual legal rights.”

In a concurring opinion, the court’s four liberal justices laid out a road map for a challenge to reach the Supreme Court. They said challengers can offer more specific evidence of how they were “packed” into some districts and “cracked” among others. And they said that statewide claims can be based on the First Amendment’s right of association – all in an effort to stop politicians from “degrading the nation’s democracy.”

“Courts – and in particular this court – will again be called on to redress extreme partisan gerrymanders,” Justice Elena Kagan predicted. “I am hopeful we will then step up to our responsibility to vindicate the Constitution against a contrary law.”

The decisions won’t have major implications for other states – including North Carolina, Texas, Ohio, Michigan and Virginia – where legislatures controlled by one party drew “gerrymandered” district lines. Nor will they require changes in district lines this year, but the potential remains for 2020, when state legislators will earn the right to draw the next decade’s maps.

“While it’s disappointing to see the court punt, the decisions aren’t losses,” said Michael Li, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. “Both cases go on, and the justices will have the chance to finally say something about when gerrymandering is illegal next term.”

Across the nation, hundreds of members of Congress and thousands of state legislators are elected in districts drawn to favor the party that controls state government. That has largely favored Republicans during the past decade. The Wisconsin map has left Republicans with 63 of 99 seats in the lower house of an otherwise politically balanced state.

Challengers to Wisconsin’s lines told the justices in October that the GOPdrawn lines violated their constitutional right to equal protection by diluting the weight of their votes.

SHAWN THEW/EPA-EFE Protesters demonstrate outside the Supreme Court in March as justices considered election maps that favor the party in power.