Opposing view: Redistricting ruling a constitutional victory

The Supreme Court has definitively declined to involve federal courts in the Game of Thrones that is redistricting, ruling that conflicts over partisan gerrymandering are best left to politicians and the electoral process.

The two cases resolved Thursday surely presented the strongest imaginable temptation to impose the judicial will on the wheel of politics: North Carolina Democrats and Maryland Republicans alleged that redistricting plans not only discriminated against them based on their political views, they also handicapped their First Amendment associational freedoms.

But not for nothing had the high court declined for decades to validate this theory. Various justices long ago identified the fundamental flaw in every partisan gerrymandering claim. Namely: Under whatever formulation, it always reduces to the “group right” of some political party or faction to control a proportional number of seats.

That group right has never been recognized by the court because it is foreign to our Constitution. How is one to define each political association that deserves a proportion of seats, and how are we to assign each voter to one of those groups?

So here, the court was curious to learn whether these problems had finally been solved. Had the latest set of plaintiffs solved the doctrinal problems? And would better math help give form to a justiciable cause of action?

Alas, the majority found, there is nothing new under the sun. The individual right the plaintiffs claimed — to be “free” of partisan gerrymandering — turned out to be the same thing as the long-discredited group right to proportional representation.

Now we know: Federal courts will not adjudicate claims for partisan gerrymandering. Thursday’s decision keeps redistricting judgments with the political branches, and for that reason, it’s a victory for the Constitution.