First, the partisan-gerrymandering news. The North Carolina case, Rucho v. Common Cause, was sent back for reconsideration (“vacate and remand”) in light of the Court’s decision in Gill v. Whitford. Retrying Rucho would take a while, so hopefully they will find a faster way.

Now, to racial gerrymandering. In the last redistricting case of this year’s term, Abbott v. Perez, the Supreme Court has ruled against a racial gerrymandering claim. Justice Alito wrote the 5-4 opinion here. With one exception (Texas House District 90), the decision locks in most of a temporary (but according to the plaintiffs, inadequate) map drawn by a trial court in 2012.

In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote that the majority had gone out of its way to preserve a racially biased map. And now most of a probable racial gerrymander stays in place for the rest of the cycle. That’s what comes from having no clear standards: a decade-long shell game that leaves plaintiffs with little or no remedy.

If applied to other cases, Justice Alito’s discriminatory-intent-standard analysis and the jurisdictional arguments may spell trouble for future Voting Rights Act and gerrymandering claims of any kind. This would not affect the re-hearing of the North Carolina case, since there the legislators explicitly conceded discriminatory partisan intent. But it would set the bar extremely high – perhaps impossibly high – for future claims. Rick Hasen has more to say.

It seems to me that a critical misstep was the fact that the trial court drew a “temporary” fix in 2012 that was then passed into law. I wonder…if they had a faster way to draw remedial maps, I wonder, could this mess have been avoided?

For more background, see Common Cause and the Brennan Center summaries.