The Supreme Court has never struck down a voting map on the grounds that it was drawn to amplify the power of the political party in control of the state legislature. In their Supreme Court brief, North Carolina lawmakers asked the court to close that door. The Constitution, they wrote, contemplated a role for politics in redistricting by assigning the task to state legislatures, adding that federal courts have no role to play in supervising the legislatures’ judgments. But in recent years, as Republicans captured state legislatures around the country, they have been the primary architects and beneficiaries of partisan gerrymandering. Using increasingly sophisticated software, they have drawn voting districts to favor their party’s candidates.

Source: New York Times March 18, 2019 09:00 UTC