The U.S. Supreme Court punted last week on the constitutionality of drawing election districts that hugely benefit one political party over another.
The justices said the two redistricting cases brought before them — one from Maryland that benefitted Democrats, one from Wisconsin that benefitted Republicans — had procedural problems, and thus the court was not going to tackle yet the thorny question of when gerrymandering for reasons other than race goes too far.
But another case, this one from North Carolina, waits in the wings, and it is different because it apparently can’t be dismissed on a technicality.
Eventually, the court is going to have to give some guidance to — and preferably put some restraint on — state lawmakers who draw their own lines and those for Congress in a way that gives one party a grossly disproportionate share of seats.
Such gerrymandering has fueled the polarization of America. It has driven moderates out of politics and made it difficult to forge compromise at statehouses and in Congress.
The best way to handle redistricting is to take it out of the hands of those who have an obvious conflict of interest — the incumbent legislators. Instead, all states should use an independent commission to draw the voting boundaries, as a handful of them already do.
The Supreme Court could compel that reform, if it only would. Perhaps the North Carolina case will be the one that achieves it.
