The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Wednesday heard a challenge to the way that state’s congressional district map has been drawn. Its decision could affect this year’s federal midterm elections.
Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices on Wednesday interrogated lawyers defending the way the state’s congressional districts were drawn, a map opponents have challenged as illegally shaped to benefit Republicans, who hold a majority of its seats in the U.S. House.
Based on the tenor of their questions, a majority of the court, which has five Democrats and two Republicans, appeared open to the argument that Pennsylvania’s congressional districts are illegally gerrymandered.
Just how bad is the gerrymandering, you ask?
[I]n the three congressional elections held since the maps were drawn, the same 13 of 18 seats have gone to Republicans, even though the overall vote in the state has been about evenly split.
Of course, a fairer map won’t necessarily result in a drastic change in the composition of the state’s congressional delegation. The New York Times devised a “fair” map and found that Republicans still held an edge in Pennsylvania congressional districts.
This map represents a big improvement for Democrats over the Republican gerrymander. But it still might disappoint some Democrats. Donald J. Trump would have won 11 of these districts, even though he barely won the statewide popular vote. In fact, this map has an 8 percent efficiency gap in favor of the Republicans (in the 2016 presidential election). An 8 percent efficiency gap is a proposed threshold for whether a map should be considered an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
Even if the court finds the map unacceptable and orders a revision, fairness could still elude Pennsylvanians in the short term. A number of additional factors—most of them time-related—would determine when and how the map would be redrawn.
Justices also questioned whether fair maps could be withdrawn in time for the May 15 primary, or whether the primary could reasonably and fairly be pushed back to July, August or September. Some asked whether a ruling would affect the March special election to replace former U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy, a southwestern Pennsylvania Republican who resigned amid a scandal. The Wolf administration lawyer said the race in Murphy’s former district would not be affected.
The Pennsylvania gerrymandering case will progress independent of the more prominent gerrymandering litigation taking place in federal courts.
The case is about state, not federal, law, so the result will stand regardless of how the United States Supreme Court rules on the biggest question of all: whether partisan gerrymandering violates the Constitution.
A Supreme Court ruling against partisan gerrymandering could usher in a half-dozen or more new congressional maps before the 2020 election, but probably not before this November’s midterm elections.
If the Supreme Court doesn't limit partisan gerrymandering, it could get a lot more extreme.
Of course, a Supreme Court ruling curtailing gerrymandering could later become the basis for a later challenge to Pennsylvania’s district map. Conversely, if the Supreme Court does not place limits on gerrymandering, Pennsylvania’s supreme court ruling could prove influential in other state courts.