Washington Post: Supreme Court signals it is in no rush to decide controversial cases

On Monday, the court sent back the case involving North Carolina’s congressional districts for a lower court to apply Gill.

Common Cause, which brought the North Carolina case, said it is confident that it meets the legal standing requirement because it has plaintiffs in each of the 13 congressional districts. The state contends otherwise, saying the plaintiffs pressed a statewide challenge of vote dilution, which it says Gill does not allow. …

When a three-judge panel invalidated the map of congressional districts, it became the first to strike a congressional map on the grounds that it was rigged in favor of a political party.

North Carolina has a past at the Supreme Court – the state’s past redistricting plans have been struck down as racial gerrymanders. So when the state legislature adopted new plans in 2016, Republican leaders made clear they were drawing the lines to help their party, instead of basing their decisions on racial data.

“I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats,” Rep. David Lewis, a Republican member of the North Carolina General Assembly, said in 2016. “So I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country.”

He added: “I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and 3 Democrats because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and 2 Democrats.”

When voters went to the polls that fall, the outcome was exactly as Lewis had predicted, even though Republicans won just 53 percent of the statewide vote.

The “goal of this plan was to make Democratic votes count less than Republican votes,” said Ben Thorpe, a lawyer for Common Cause. “This is as extreme as partisan gerrymandering gets. If this case is not the limit, then there may be no limit.”

The case is Rucho v. Common Cause.