The Supreme Court looks poised to strike down gerrymandering. Here's why.

Anthony Kennedy was tellingly quiet during oral arguments

Protesters outside the Supreme Court.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Joshua Roberts)

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday for one of the most important cases it will hear this term. Gill v. Whitford is a challenge to the extreme gerrymandering of the Wisconsin legislature. The state's gerrymander — under which Republicans were able to capture 60 out of 99 seats in the Wisconsin Assembly with less than 50 percent of the vote — effectively disenfranchises half of Wisconsin's closely divided electorate. And the arguments suggest that a majority of justices may finally rule that Republicans have gone too far.

Gerrymandering, the drawing of district lines to benefit political parties and/or candidates, has a very long history. But aided by computer models, it has become much more extreme. "Close to a hundred congressional seats and thousands of state legislative seats have been strategically drawn to be noncompetitive at the expense of all other interests," observe Sam Wang and Brian Remlinger, co-heads of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. "As a consequence, tens of millions of voters have had no meaningful say in who represents them." And if Wisconsin's filibuster is upheld by the Court, the problem will get even worse.

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Scott Lemieux

Scott Lemieux is a professor of political science at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, N.Y., with a focus on the Supreme Court and constitutional law. He is a frequent contributor to the American Prospect and blogs for Lawyers, Guns and Money.