Policy Backgrounders

Redistricting Update: A Continued Focus on the Courts

October 24, 2023

In May 2022, CED released a Policy Backgrounder, Gerrymandering Update: Focus on the Courts, which discussed several redistricting cases following the 2021 release of the Census Bureau’s reapportionment data. After state legislatures drew their maps, attention shifted to the judiciary to determine the constitutionality of maps drawn for both federal and state elections. Well over a year later, with less than 13 months until the November 2024 elections, several states’ maps remain contested.

• Federal judges selected new congressional district lines for Alabama earlier this month after the Supreme Court rejected Alabama’s attempt to defy its June decision in Allen v. Milligan, which decided that the state must draw a second largely Black district.
• Following oral argument for Alexander v. South Carolina, the Supreme Court’s majority last week expressed skepticism that the drawing of the lines for a South Carolina congressional district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
• In June in a 6-3 decision in the case of Moore v. Harper, the Supreme Court rejected the “independent state legislature” theory, ruling that state lawmakers’ power under the US Constitution to control its congressional elections are not unlimited but are subject to state constitutions and state courts.