State courts take on gerrymandering

Three years ago, the Supreme Court washed its hands of challenges to partisan gerrymandering. Fortunately, several state courts have stepped into the void.

In recent weeks, courts in several states have blocked some of the more egregious efforts to maximize partisan congressional majorities, in what seems likely to become the best way to curb such efforts in the future.

Gerrymandering is a practice that is nearly as old as the United States itself. After all, the term was first used when Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry approved a state Senate map with misshapen districts in 1812.

But more recently, thanks to computers, the redistricting required after each census has become something of a fine art, producing results in states like Texas and Wisconsin that essentially make some votes worth more than others.

Two things have been different this time. Democrats have caught up with Republicans in figuring out ways to maximize their support. And state courts have become more aggressive in treading where the Supreme Court refused to go by ruling some partisanship went too far.

The net sum of these rulings, once judicial processes play out, will likely influence the extent of expected Republican gains in next November’s elections, when most analysts believe the GOP will win back the House.

Meanwhile, federal courts in Alabama, Florida and Texas are considering cases where challengers allege GOP plans contain Voting Rights Act violations. But they will have to persuade judicial panels that are likely to resist such contentions.

Interestingly, several recent state rulings -- in Maryland, New York and Ohio -have not followed predictable partisan lines, providing an unusual degree of nonpartisanship in these polarized times.

In New York, the state’s top court last week rejected a congressional map which the large Democratic legislative majorities produced after a bipartisan commission deadlocked in drawing district lines. The map would likely transform their current 19-8 majority to a lopsided 23-3.

By 4-3, the Court of Appeals ruled that the plan violated a 2014 state constitutional amendment designed to curb political influence in redistricting and was “drawn with impermissible partisan purpose.”

The majority decision was written by Chief Judge Janet Difiore, an appointee of former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo. In fact, Democratic governors named all seven judges.

Here is what happened elsewhere: KANSAS: A Democratic state judge last week threw out the GOP legislature’s plan for allocating the state’s four congressional seats, declaring it “has been artificially engineered to give one segment of the political apparatus an unfair and unearned advantage.”

Republicans plan to appeal the case to the state Supreme Court, but four of its seven judges were named by Democratic governors, creating doubts the initial decision will be overturned.

The GOP plan endangered the seat represented by Rep. Sharice Davids, the state’s only Democratic House member, one of four Native Americans in the House and Kansas’ first openly LGBTQ member.

MARYLAND: The Democraticcontrolled legislature passed a plan aimed at eliminating the lone GOP seat in the eight-member delegation. But it was ruled unconstitutional by a state circuit judge, initially named by a former Democratic governor.

Lawmakers quickly passed a new plan, keeping the mostly rural Eastern Shore district Republican and making more competitive a district in western Maryland now represented by a Democrat.

NORTH CAROLINA: In the year’s biggest Democratic judicial victory, the North Carolina state Supreme Court, dividing 4-3 along party lines, rejected the Republican legislature’s plan giving the GOP 10 of 14 seats.

It declared the legislative plan “deprives a voter of his or her right to substantially equal voting power on the basis of partisan affiliation,” and voted for a plan that could produce a 7-7 split next November.

OHIO: The State Supreme Court, composed of four Republicans and three Democrats, has four times rejected congressional and legislative redistricting plans proposed by the Ohio Redistricting Commission, a panel of state officials with a 5-2 GOP majority.

Under its congressional plan, the 12-4 Republican majority GOP officials installed a decade ago could become a 13-2 margin.

Chief Justice Maureen O’connor, a Republican, has repeatedly joined three Democratic judges in concluding the

commission violated its charter requiring districts that are compact and don’t unduly favor one party.

But the court allowed this week’s primaries to proceed under the current map, pending a

final resolution of the impasse.

PENNSYVANIA: The Democratic-controlled State Supreme Court approved a plan dividing the 17 districts roughly evenly after the Democratic governor vetoed the Republican legislature’s pro-gop plan.

The same court several years ago threw out a post-2010

GOP plan that produced a 13-5 GOP majority in a state that

Democrats have carried more often than Republicans.

WISCONSIN: Not all state courts have produced balanced results. In Wisconsin, the prorepublican Supreme Court approved GOP legislators’ latest effort to maximize their numbers, maintaining their 2-to-1 legislative majorities in the evenly divided state.

However, the court approved a

Democratic congressional plan making one GOP district more competitive.

The Alabama, Florida and Texas redistricting cases in federal courts all pose similar issues: Alabama’s legislature rejected a second Black majority district; Florida’s eliminated districts of two Black House members; and Texas’ cut the number of Hispanic majority districts

despite Hispanic-dominated growth.

But given Republican majorities on the two southern U.S. Appeals Courts and the Supreme Court, challengers face an uphill battle in seeking to right those redistricting wrongs.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News.