Today, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled against basic fairness in elections with their decision on Rucho v. Common Cause and Lamone v. Benisek.

In a 5-4 ruling decided along ideological lines, the Court's conservative justices ruled that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts. This means that federal courts will not have a role to play in reviewing such claims.

What this means for Texas

Though Texas is a battleground state in 2020, gerrymandering continues to skew our political representation. 

The Court’s ruling puts on full display the conservative justices’ lack of commitment to basic fairness in our elections, mirroring their political counterparts’ efforts to rig elections across the nation. 

We want Texans to choose our politicians; we don’t want our politicians to choose their Texans.

This decision will do nothing but embolden political line-drawing after the 2020 census. 

The dissent speaks for itself.

Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent was joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Stephen Breyer, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor. 

In her dissent, Kagan argues that partisan gerrymandering deprives citizens of the most fundamental of their constitutional rights: the right to participate equally in the political process, to join with others to advance political beliefs, and to choose their political representatives.

“Of all times to abandon the Court’s duty to declare the law, this was not the one. The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government. Part of the Court’s role in that system is to defend its foundations. None is more important than free and fair elections. With respect but deep sadness, I dissent.”