By Hannah Meisel

* The U.S. Supreme court this morning declined to rule on the merits of Gill v. Whitford, better known as the Wisconsin gerrymandering case and Benisek v. Lamone, a Maryland case involving a Democratically gerrymandered district. Instead, the court remanded the Wisconsin case back to the District Court level, ruling the 12 plaintiffs lacked proper standing to sue, as they failed to show injury from the entire Assembly map. On remand, the plaintiffs will have a chance to evaluate their claims of gerrymandering specific to their district.

From the opinion, authored by Justice Elena Kagan…

To be sure, remedying each plaintiff ’s vote dilution injury “requires revising only such districts as are necessary to reshape [that plaintiff ’s] district—so that the [plaintiff] may be unpacked or uncracked, as the case may be.” But with enough plaintiffs joined together—attacking all the packed and cracked districts in a statewide gerrymander—those obligatory revisions could amount to a wholesale restructuring of the State’s districting plan.

* From WaPo…

The Supreme Court on Monday sidestepped a decision on when partisan gerrymandering goes too far, ruling against the challengers of a Republican-drawn map in Wisconsin and a Democratic redistricting in Maryland.

The rulings in the separate cases once again put off a decision on when courts can find that partisan efforts to keep parties in power goes so far as to be unconstitutional. But the court again left open a path for such challenges.

It was a technical resolution of what has seemed to hold the promise of being a landmark decision about extreme efforts to give one party advantage over another.

While the court routinely polices the drawing of electoral maps to combat racial gerrymandering, it has never found that partisan efforts went too far. It has never settled on a test that judges could use to determine how much politics was too much.

The practical impact of the case is that legislation elections in Wisconsin this year will be conducted using the map challengers said overwhelmingly favors Republicans. The Maryland congressional districts will also remain the same, including the district that challengers said was drawn to elect a Democrat. The incumbent is not running for election.

However, as the WaPo article points out…

A pending challenge of North Carolina’s redistricting efforts could provide another case for the justices to consider the issue. In that battleground state, Republicans control 10 of 13 congressional districts. That case has plaintiffs challenging each district.

* Had the court ruled on the merits of the cases, it would have had major consequences for Illinois. Maybe the Wisconsin case will get back up to SCOTUS before the 2021 redistricting, or even that North Carolina case.

From Wisconsin Public Radio’s Shawn Johnson (PAR class of 2001)…

"This is definitely not the end of the road," says @skchheda, director of the Fair Elections Project. "There is no vindication for the state’s rigging of the maps and disenfranchising of our voters here." Says plaintiffs will examine their options.

— Shawn Johnson (@SJohnsonWPR) June 18, 2018

Some really great podcast deep dives on gerrymandering:

- Planet Money’s recent episode “Ungerrymandering Florida”
- More Perfect (from Radiolab)’s two episodes “The Political Thicket” and “Who’s Gerry and Why Is He So Bad at Drawing Maps?”