History
The Politics of Redistricting and Gerrymandering
Quick fact
The Supreme Court has ruled that extreme partisan gerrymandering is a political question that federal courts cannot decide (Rucho v. Common Cause, 2019), yet racial gerrymandering remains reviewable under the Voting Rights Act, leaving a legal gap.
Why this is interesting
Every ten years, the lines that determine who represents you in Congress are redrawn—often not by judges, but by the very politicians whose jobs depend on those lines. How do they get away with it?
Read the full explanation
Understanding The Politics of Redistricting and Gerrymandering
After each census, the U.S. population shifts, so the number of representatives each state gets can change. States must redraw their congressional and state legislative districts to keep them roughly equal in population (the 'one person, one vote' principle). This process is called redistricting. Because the people who draw the lines are usually state legislators themselves, they have an incentive to draw districts that maximize their own party's chances. They use techniques like 'packing' (concentrating the opposing party's voters into few districts) and 'cracking' (spreading them across many districts to dilute their impact). This manipulation is called gerrymandering. The term comes from an 1812 Massachusetts district that looked like a salamander, drawn by Governor Elbridge Gerry. The resulting maps can be so bizarrely shaped that they seem to serve no purpose other than political advantage.
A deeper explanation
The underlying mechanism is the tension between two principles: fairness in representation and the reality that those in power control the map-drawing process. Since the 1960s, the Supreme Court has required districts to be substantially equal in population, but it has been reluctant to strike down maps purely for partisan bias, arguing that courts can't easily define a standard for political fairness. However, when race becomes the dominant factor in drawing districts, the Court has used the Equal Protection Clause and the Voting Rights Act to invalidate such maps. The result is a legal environment where partisan gerrymandering is effectively unregulated by federal courts, while racial gerrymandering is prohibited. States can choose to mitigate the conflict of interest by using independent commissions, but most still leave the legislature in charge. This makes redistricting a high-stakes political battle where both parties try to lock in advantages for the next decade.