Voting right advocates are saying the U.S. Supreme Court missed an opportunity to address the crisis of partisan gerrymandering on Monday after the court punted on two separate cases—one from Wisconsin and one from Maryland—focused on the issue.
Though disappointed in the rulings, Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, said the outcome means the cases have been referred back to lower courts and, as such, “the fight to establish constitutional limits on partisan gerrymandering is very much alive.”
The side-stepping also means the controversial maps stay in place for mid-term elections this fall.
In the Wisconsin case, Gill v. Whitford (pdf), Democratic voters had challenged the state’s legislative districts drawn up in 2011 by Republican legislators, which afforded the GOP more legislative control. The justices ruled unanimously that the plaintiffs lacked standing, but in a 7-2 decision also sent the case back to district court “to give the plaintiffs an opportunity to prove concrete and particularized injuries using evidence that would tend to demonstrate a burden on their individual votes.”
In a concurring opinion, Justice Kagan wrote that “unfair partisan gerrymandering, as this Court has recognized, is ‘incompatible with democratic principles.'” She wrote:
When the case goes back to the same lower court that struck down the mapping configuration, “We are confident we can prove the real harms to real citizens caused by lawmakers who choose their voters instead of the voters choosing their representatives. We are encouraged by Kagan’s concurrence,” said plaintiff Bill Whitford, a retired law professor from Madison.
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