ABC News: Groups answer Supreme Court with million-dollar push to counter gerrymandering

After a setback at the Supreme Court earlier this year, advocates for what they see as fairer, less-partisan election maps nationwide are stepping up their fight at the state level. …

The campaigns are partly a response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision to stay out of the politics of gerrymandering once and for all. The court’s conservative majority said federal courts would not police the drawing of electoral maps, leaving it to the states and Congress to develop and enforce the rules.

“Our conclusion does not condone excessive partisan gerrymandering. Nor does our conclusion condemn complaints about districting to echo into a void,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court’s opinion in Rucho v Common Cause. “Provisions in state statutes and state constitutions can provide standards and guidance for state courts to apply.” …

Advocates say state constitutional provisions guaranteeing “free and fair” elections may be the most fertile ground to rollback discriminatory gerrymandering, since any rulings in state court would likely not be reviewable by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Just this week, a unanimous three-judge panel in North Carolina struck down that state’s legislative district maps saying they were unfairly drawn to benefit Republicans — in violation of the state constitution.

The “decision offers a framework for other states to evaluate their own redistricting,” said Stanton Jones, a constitutional lawyer at the firm Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C. “There are a number of other state constitutions around the country with free elections clauses similar or identical to the one in North Carolina.”

A challenge to Pennsylvania’s congressional map brought by the League of Women Voters reached a similar conclusion last year, with that state’s Supreme Court finding the gerrymandered districts violated state law.

The cases show that “state constitutions can be invoked to protect the people of that state,” said Kathay Feng, national redistricting director at Common Cause.

Twenty-eight states have constitutional clauses guaranteeing “free” elections and 13 of those guarantee the right to “free and equal election,” according to the group.