The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Thursday that partisan gerrymandering cases cannot be decided by federal courts.
Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the court in Rucho v. Common Cause and Lamone v. Benisek, a consolidated partisan gerrymandering case. Voters from Maryland and North Carolina brought the claims alleging that the gerrymandering violated the First Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Elections Clause and Article I, §2, of the Constitution.
The court found that these claims present a non-justiciable political question, basing their ruling on the court’s precedent and on the history of gerrymandering in the political process.
