Partisan gerrymandering can't be decided in federal courts, Supreme Court rules

The Supreme Court has decided not to make a decision on partisan gerrymandering.

In two rulings announced Thursday, the court decided 5-4 against challengers to partisan gerrymandering, a practice that allows majority political parties to draw voting districts that benefit their candidates. The court's conservative justices backed the decision, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing that "partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts" in his majority opinion.

The two cases involved challengers to Maryland and North Carolina's congressional district maps. Republican voters brought the Maryland case, saying Democrats redrew a district in 2011 to benefit their incumbent, The New York Times notes. Meanwhile, the North Carolina case concerned a Republican lawmaker who explicitly said he'd redrawn districts to preserve a distinct 10-3 GOP majority in the state's legislature despite a relatively even Democrat-Republican split in votes statewide. In ruling against both challengers, the court also suggested that it would avoid hearing future cases involving partisan gerrymandering.

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Also on Thursday, the court handed down a decision to block a citizenship question from being added to the 2020 census. Roberts played the deciding vote in that ruling, joining the liberal justices in saying the Trump administration's explanation for adding the question was not justified.