Supreme Court’s approval of partisan gerrymandering raises election stakes

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld highly partisan state election maps that permit one party to win most seats, even when most voters cast ballots for the other side.

Partisan gerrymandering has allowed Republicans to control power in several closely divided states. And it has been repeatedly condemned for depriving citizens of a fair vote and letting politicians rig the outcomes.

But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., speaking for a 5-4 conservative majority, ruled that citizens may not sue in federal court over the issue.

Partisan gerrymandering claims “present political questions beyond the reach of federal courts,” he said, tossing out lower court rulings that North Carolina’s Republicans and Maryland’s Democrats had drawn skewed districts to entrench their party in power.

While the Supreme Court has repeatedly said racial gerrymandering is unconstitutional, it has never struck down an election map because it was unfairly partisan, despite four decades of lawsuits over the issue.

Thursday’s decision goes even further, closing the courthouse door to future claims. “Federal judges have no license to reallocate political power between the two major political parties, with no plausible grant of authority in the Constitution and no legal standards to limit and direct their decisions,” he wrote in Rucho vs. Common Cause.

The court’s four liberal justices dissented, warning that new technology has made partisan gerrymandering easier and more precise than ever before.

“These are not your grandfather’s — let alone the framers’ — gerrymanders,” said Justice Elena Kagan.

“The partisan gerrymanders here debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside-down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people,” she said, reading her dissent in the court. “Of all the time to abandon the court’s duty to declare the law, this was not the one. The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government.”

The ruling substantially raises the stakes for the 2020 election. In many states, whichever party controls the state Legislature and the governor’s office at that time will be in a prime position to gerrymander electoral districts in their favor and lock in political power for years to come.

“This is obviously a deeply disappointing outcome,” said Allison Riggs, a voting rights lawyer who represented the League of Women Voters in the North Carolina case. There, the state’s Republican leaders drew an election map that aimed to lock in 10 of 13 seats for the GOP.

“Unlike citizens in some other states, North Carolinians cannot force redistricting reform upon recalcitrant legislators,” Riggs said. “We must raise our voices even more loudly, demanding change.”

While reform advocates were distraught over the decision — envisioning an era of ruthless, no-holdsbarred gerrymandering — there is reason to believe the result may not be as drastic as feared.

Numerous states, including California, have taken the line-drawing process away from politicians and placed it the hands of independent commissioners