If the Supreme Court lays down a partisan symmetry-based standard for gerrymandering, will this open up a flood of lawsuits? Over at Election Law Blog, I use election evidence to argue that no, it will act as more of a brushback to future offenders.

The reason? As you can see in the chart, partisan gerrymanders only took off starting in the 2000 redistricting cycle, at the same time that it began to be thought that they were legal. Before then, they were considerably less common.

Thanks to Rick Hasen for hosting the essay, and to Brian Remlinger for data analysis.