Reading the tea leaves, Rick Pildes and others have speculated that the Court may decide Whitford on standing grounds. I’ve previously explained why this would be a bad idea. But here I want to make two other points about the… Continue reading

I just posted a new article of mine, “Accountability Claims in Constitutional Law,” that recently came out in the Northwestern University Law Review. The abstract is below. While the piece addresses a range of constitutional doctrines, readers of this blog… Continue reading

At first glance, a district-specific theory of partisan gerrymandering (like the one presented in Benisek) seems to approach the issue of standing very differently from a statewide gerrymandering theory (like the one presented in Whitford). After all, a plaintiff in… Continue reading

Rick (Pildes) has a nice post thinking through whether a First Amendment theory of partisan gerrymandering renders the practice more like racial gerrymandering or racial vote dilution. I just want to add a few thoughts to Rick’s discussion: 1. There’s… Continue reading

Say you’re trying to determine whether a district plan that has been used in multiple elections has been highly skewed in a party’s favor. Would you look only at how the plan performed in its first election? Or would you… Continue reading

Over the past week, I’ve repeatedly blogged about PlanScore’s upload feature, which allows users instantly to receive analyses of the partisan implications of proposed district maps. I also wanted to mention the site’s other half: comprehensive data about current… Continue reading

Rick noted that there’s been some talk of a VRA challenge to the new Pennsylvania congressional districts. An initial obstacle to such a claim is that the relevant new districts are nearly identical, demographically, to their predecessors. PlanScore’s pages for… Continue reading

According to PlanScore’s basic model, the remedial plan adopted today by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is impressively symmetric—both in absolute terms and compared to its predecessor. Its likely efficiency gap is -2% (versus its predecessor’s -10%), its likely partisan… Continue reading

Yesterday was the deadline for parties to submit their proposed remedial maps in the ongoing litigation over Pennsylvania’s congressional plan. In sum, seven maps were submitted: two by the plaintiffs, one by the governor, one by the lieutenant governor,… Continue reading

If the Supreme Court specifies a standard for partisan gerrymandering claims this term, it will become very important to be able to evaluate the partisan implications of new district plans. Whether these new plans are remedial (designed after an existing… Continue reading

I was very happy to see Jim Gardner’s guest post on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision striking down the state’s congressional plan. Jim has written several terrific articles on the state constitutional law of partisan gerrymandering, so I can’t think… Continue reading

Having had some more time to digest the (205-page!) decision striking down North Carolina’s congressional plan, I thought I’d share a few additional observations. First, the decision demonstrates the manageability of the partisan gerrymandering test that was proposed in Whitford… Continue reading

I’ll have more to say soon about the important district court decision striking down North Carolina’s congressional plan on partisan gerrymandering grounds. (This is a case in which I’ve been involved as a lawyer.) For now, let me just note… Continue reading

I noted a couple days ago that Maryland’s Sixth Congressional District is unconstitutional under the Benisek plaintiffs’ district-specific test, while Maryland’s congressional map is also (probably) unlawful under the Whitford plaintiffs’ statewide test. (The Benisek test requires discriminatory intent with… Continue reading