I will go out on a limb and predict that the Supreme Court agrees on Monday to hear Larios v. Cox on the merits. Larios involves (among other questions) whether a state needs to come up with a justification when its state legislative districting plan has population deviations under 10%. The rule from Gaffney v. Cummings, 412 U.S. 735 (1973) appeared to be that the state did not need to come up with any justification for under 10% deviations, but lower courts have been increasingly asking for justifications. See, for example, Daly v. Hunt, 93 F.3d 1212, 1220 (4th Cir. 1996), Hulme v. Madison County, 188 F.Supp.2d 1041 (S.D. Ill. 2001), Montiel v. Davis, 215 F. Supp. 2d 1279 (S.D. Ala. 2002). (The rule is different for congressional districts, where mathematical equality is the rule.)
The Court has relisted the case for conference a few times (see here), and we may know something Monday. The last time we saw such a relisting was in the Colorado case, where three Justices dissented from the denial of cert. We could see a dissent from a summary affirmance here, but I think there is a fair chance the Justices will want to take this case to stop this increased litigation over relatively minor deviations from population equality.
I don’t think this issue is nearly as important as the partisan gerrymandering issue in Vieth and in the pending Texas case (nothing likely on that case before October), but I could see good reason for the Court to get involved here.