“Is the Supreme Court finally ready to tackle partisan gerrymandering? Signs suggest yes”

I have written this oped for the LA Times.  A snippet:

Maybe there is some technical problem with the Gill case — such as a lack of standing for the plaintiffs — that would prevent the court from deciding it on the merits. Maybe the court will rule that these cases must be decided on a district-by-district basis (as in Benisek) rather than on a statewide basis (as in Gill). Maybe the court does not like the efficiency-gap theory, and prefers the 1st Amendment argument offered in Benisek. (In brief, the theory is that when a legislature draws lines to minimize a political party’s voting strength, it interferes with the associational rights of the party’s voters, discriminating against them simply because they are Republicans or Democrats.)

The tweet reminded me of what Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said during the Gill oral arguments about being forced into the business of choosing Democrats or Republicans. He said that if the “intelligent man on the street” sees the court siding with Democrats in one of these disputes, “it must be because the Supreme Court preferred the Democrats over the Republicans. And that’s going to come out one case after another as these cases are brought in every state. And that is going to cause very serious harm to the status and integrity of the decisions of this court in the eyes of the country.”

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