Partisan Gerrymandering Could Soon be Unconstitutional
Some time before June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hand down rulings on two cases with momentous impacts on who controls power in state legislatures and the U.S. Congress. “These cases are likely to be the most important democracy cases in decades,” says Michael Li, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
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The Supreme Court has been loath to step into what some view as the quagmire of partisan politics. Justice Roberts, during arguments in the Wisconsin case in October 2017, said that if the court recognized the Wisconsin claim, it would see a great many cases in which they would have to determine the outcome. Smith responded that if “we’re not going to have a judicial remedy for this problem, in 2020, you’re going to have a festival of copycat gerrymandering, the likes of which this country has never seen. And it may be that you can protect the court from seeming political, but the country is going to lose faith in democracy big time ….”