Gerrymandering/Redistricting

Today is a day of celebration for all of those who care about freedom and democracy, with the Supreme Court recognizing the vital importance of what remains of the Voting Rights Act to protect Americans from the insidious effects of discrimination.

Flight attendants use euphemistic doublespeak because, understandably, they want to avoid terms like “hijacking” and "September 11th.” For similar reasons, Jones spoke in broad terms, without directly invoking Trump or January 6th. (There were also other reasons for this, such as Common Cause’s nonpartisan status.) Even so, the implications were clear. At one point, an organizer sitting in the audience stood, using a cane, and gave an impromptu speech, urging listeners to imagine a Supreme Court opinion that enabled legislatures to rig elections at will. “There was a time when I used to think things like that couldn’t happen,” he said. “But then we had January 6th, Roe—these things can happen. They’re happening.”

State courts have become the battleground for partisan gerrymandering after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 2019 ruling in the case known as Rucho v. Common Cause. "For several decades, people in the states had held out hope that the Supreme Court would lay down a standard for finding that partisan gerrymandering had happened and potentially overruling maps where that kind of vote rigging had happened," says Kathay Feng, vice president of programs at Common Cause, the advocacy group that has also helped lead the ongoing case against a North Carolina congressional map approved by Republican state lawmakers.

After April’s decision, Alaska became the 13th state to have its highest court interpret the state’s constitution to ban partisan gerrymandering. A further seven states have a statutory ban on partisan gerrymandering, according to Dan Vicuña, national redistricting manager at Common Cause, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit that campaigns to end gerrymandering across the nation. “Whether it happens in a red state or a blue state, a constitutional ban on partisan gerrymandering is always a landmark victory for the people,” Vicuña said in an interview. “The Alaska Supreme Court is recognizing — like a lot of state courts are recognizing — that they simply have to intervene when voting rights are under attack through gerrymandering.”

The North Carolina state court ruling “makes it even more clear that the Supreme Court needs to make a decision about whether or not that legislature should be able to rule over federal elections without any checks or balances or if we still want courts to have a role,” said Kathay Feng, the vice president of programs at the good government group Common Cause. Common Cause is one of the parties in the federal lawsuit opposing the ISL theory. “We need to have a definitive answer from the Supreme Court,” she continued.

Only one party in the case, Common Cause, argued for the Supreme Court to decide the issue — and rule against North Carolina. In a brief filed Thursday, the group argued that the mere fact that North Carolina’s high court ruled in the case means the U.S. Supreme Court can still decide it. “Petitioners’ core contention before this Court is that the Elections Clause prohibits state constitutions—and state courts—from imposing limits on the authority of state legislatures over congressional redistricting. But the North Carolina Supreme Court has now twice rejected that contention,” the brief said.