A partisan abdication

The increasingly outlandish distortion of voting districts to yield particular political results has been under siege in recent years, with voters and judges in a succession of states following California’s lead in reforming the redistricting process. Facing a pair of overt efforts to increase partisan advantages through such creative cartography, the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that such partisan gerrymandering is “beyond the reach of the federal courts” — news, no doubt, to the federal courts that have rejected excessively partisan maps in five states.

The cases at hand, one of them before the justices for a second consecutive year, tested the conservatives’ determination to ignore them. In one, Maryland’s Democrats, holding six of the state’s eight congressional districts, set out to seize one of two reliably Republican districts by dividing its GOP voters and appending a tendril to collect farflung Democrats from the Washington, D.C., suburbs.

In the other, North Carolina Republicans redrew congressional districts to ordain a 103 GOP advantage because, as one legislative leader put it, he could not think of a way to make it 112. They thereby came to represent more than threequarters of seats with about half the vote.

Such results don’t only “reasonably seem unjust” — as Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged in the 54 majority opinion — but are at obvious odds with constitutional principles of equal protection, free association and popular sovereignty. One wonders what exactly the Constitution and its arbiters protect if not our power to elect our representatives.

The majority argued that defining excessive partisan gerrymandering is somehow beyond the courts’ capacity and, moreover, unnecessary given that California and other states have addressed the problem through independent redistricting commissions and other means. But as one lawyer for the challengers argued, “other options don’t relieve this court of its duty to vindicate constitutional rights.”

Gerrymandering is, as the cases at issue showed, a bipartisan sin, but in recent years it has worked to the overall advantage of Republicans, who control more state governments. It’s unfortunate but fitting that the momentum against partisan gerrymandering has been stalled by a partisan court.