Okay, But Why is Gerrymandering Legal?
The term gerrymandering comes from all the way back in 1812. Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry signed a bill to redraw the district maps in his state, and one of the new districts was said to resemble the shape of a salamander. So from there, the term “Gerrymander” came about to mean any redrawing of districts to unfairly favor one political party or the other.
Gerrymandering is basically politicians picking their voters, instead of the other way around. It’s one of those subjects that makes people tune out of politics, but it’s important to understand because it has an impact on who wins elections and ensuring that our votes count.
Gerrymandering Starts with Redistricting
Every ten years, the United States does a census of its citizens. That information is used to make sure we have the right number of representatives elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from each state. If a state’s population has grown, they might add more districts; and if a state’s population has decreased, they might lose districts.
Then someone has to draw the maps that determine which people should vote in which districts. In most states, they’re drawn by the state legislature, and in a few states, it’s up to a nonpartisan group or committee. The maps are supposed to evenly divide up the residents of the state so that everyone’s voice is represented. But they’re often drawn unfairly to favor one political party.
Sometimes they’re drawn to split a minority population amongst multiple districts to reduce that group’s ability to elect a representative in any district, which is known as “cracking.” And sometimes they’re drawn to dilute a minority group’s voting power across the state by putting all of them into a single district, which they call “packing.”
That’s what gerrymandering is, and it has a significant impact on the outcome of elections. It’s one of the biggest threats to our free and fair democracy.
Is Gerrymandering legal?
Gerrymandering is not in the Constitution. The Founding Fathers laid out how many people each House representative should represent, but they left it to each state legislature to decide how they’re divided out. So why haven’t we made laws to stop gerrymandering? The answer, in part, is because the Supreme Court has decided that gerrymandering isn’t a legal problem.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 says you can’t draw district lines in order to “crack” or “pack” racial minorities, but there’s nothing in there about drawing the maps along political lines. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled on a case about gerrymandering called Rucho v. Common Cause. The case was over how district maps were drawn in North Carolina. North Carolina is pretty evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, but after the 2010 census, their new maps were drawn to favor Republicans in 9 out of 13 districts.
North Carolina state courts ruled that the new maps were unconstitutional, and the case ended up being appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. They decided, in a 5-4 decision, that gerrymandering is a political issue and not a legal one. Chief Justice John Roberts basically said that gerrymandering might be bad, but it’s not illegal; it’s up to Congress and each state to decide on their district maps, and it’s not the Supreme Court’s business to stop them. Justice Elena Kagan didn’t agree, writing that “nothing is more important than free and fair elections. With respect but deep sadness, I dissent.”
They came to a similar decision on a gerrymandering case in Wisconsin called Gill v. Whitford, over new district lines that favored Republicans. Just like the case in North Carolina, the Court decided that gerrymandered maps weren’t the business of the Supreme Court.
And last year, they ruled the same way on Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP, saying that Republican-drawn maps in South Carolina were legal because they weren’t discriminating against Black voters, just against Democrats. Racial gerrymandering is (theoretically) still illegal, but partisan gerrymandering is apparently fine. But can’t we agree that all gerrymandering is bad?
Voters from all parties are against gerrymandering, no matter who’s doing it. We all deserve for our voices to be heard in a fair and equal way. Gerrymandering doesn’t have to be illegal to be wrong.