USA Today: Gerrymandering: Voting rights and redistricting for elections collide at Supreme Court

WASHINGTON – The extreme partisanship gripping American politics could be reduced by two landmark cases coming to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, and Chief Justice John Roberts looms as the deciding vote.

For the second consecutive year, the high court is considering something it has never done before: declaring as unconstitutional election maps drawn blatantly by state legislators to gain partisan advantage.

On the chopping block will be congressional districts set by North Carolina Republicans and Maryland Democrats to give their candidates an overwhelming advantage during the past decade.

More broadly, what’s at stake is the way state and congressional election districts are redrawn once every decade in most states – a system dominated by political self-interest that grows more intense every time the Supreme Court declines to tame it. If the justices fail to act, election districts drawn after the 2020 census could be even more extreme, leading to more lopsided elections and more ideological gridlock in Congress. …

If the Supreme Court decides the congressional maps in either North Carolina or Maryland violate the Constitution by relegating some voters into irrelevance, it could signal a sea change in the way legislatures controlled by one party have tried to rig the map-making process.

“Our hope is that there is a concern about basic fairness,” says Dan Vicuña, national redistricting manager at Common Cause, which is challenging the North Carolina map. “Either side of the political aisle can be the victim of this.”