The Next Round of Partisan Gerrymandering Fights

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In Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court shut the courthouse door to challenges to partisan gerrymandering under the U.S. Constitution. The 2019 ruling shifted legal battles about the partisan effect of redistricting to the states. The results of these legal challenges have been mixed, most recently with divergent rulings in Utah and South Carolina that I’ll discuss below. The upshot is a state-by-state patchwork with significant national implications, particularly when it comes to drawing election lines for Congress. 

A new generation of legal fights is also emerging with an unprecedented cycle of mid-decade redistricting. Following calls by President Trump to shore up Republicans’ narrow House majority, Texas and Missouri have already passed new Republican gerrymanders. In November, Californians will vote on a constitutional amendment to allow the state to bypass its independent redistricting commission and replace its commission-drawn map with a temporary Democratic-drawn map for the balance of the decade. 

Federal law plays an important role in these redraws: States need to comply with the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution in drawing new maps, and in Texas, a federal lawsuit alleges that the new map is racially discriminatory. But it’s state law — typically state constitutions — that governs whether mid-decade redistricting is legally authorized, what body has the power to draw new districts, and what criteria can be considered in the map-drawing process. In Missouri, two state lawsuits filed this month against the state’s new congressional map argue that the state constitution prohibits mid-decade redistricting. 

State law will also govern future initiatives or other efforts to amend the state constitution. In August, the California Supreme Court denied an emergency petition seeking to block the November special election, when voters will consider the redistricting amendment.

But while mid-decade gerrymandering is ascendant in several states, in Utah, a court-supervised redraw is taking place now to remedy a gerrymandered map. Back in 2018, Utah voters passed a statutory initiative intended to limit partisan gerrymandering. The new law established a redistricting commission and other procedural safeguards and prohibited purposefully or unduly favoring a political party in map-drawing. The legislature was undeterred: It passed a law repealing the proposition and establishing a partisan process. 

Litigation followed, and last year, the Utah Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling recognizing a fundamental right under the state constitution to alter or reform the government through citizen initiatives. The court sent the case to the trial court to assess the legislature’s actions under this standard. In August, the lower court ruled that the legislature’s actions had violated this state constitutional protection. It reinstated the proposition, blocked the use of the state’s congressional map in future elections, and put in place a process to create a new map consistent with the proposition’s redistricting standards and requirements. Last week, the state supreme court rejected a petition for a stay by the state legislature. That means Utahns are on track to vote in 2026 under a new map.

Most state courts that have heard partisan gerrymandering claims since Rucho have agreed that their constitutions or other state laws do place limits on the practice. But last week, the South Carolina Supreme Court rejected a partisan gerrymandering challenge to its state’s congressional map as a “political question” not suitable for judicial resolution, following courts in Kansas, Nevada, New Hampshire, and North Carolina that also found such claims nonjusticiable. (Disclosure: The Brennan Center filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs.) 

The South Carolina high court emphasized that no state constitutional provisions or statutes directly address partisan gerrymandering. And it concluded that other provisions, such as the state’s free and open elections clause, apply narrowly to protect voters’ right to cast a ballot and have each vote counted equally. 

The chief justice wrote a concurrence, asserting that the court had not created “a categorical rule that all future claims of excessive partisan gerrymandering are beyond judicial review” — although it was not clear what kind of claims might still remain. The concurrence’s focus, however, was the damage wrought by Rucho. The ruling, the concurrence observed, had emboldened state legislatures. State courts, it argued, are not the best forum for resolving partisan gerrymandering, because state law requires courts to take a narrow perspective that “inevitably precludes a state’s supreme court from considering the full consequence of gerrymandering decisions in other states.” Such harms will continue unless the Supreme Court “steps back into the fray.”

The concurrence gets at the collective action problems that come when limits to congressional gerrymandering are left up to state law. It’s worth noting on this front another observation from Rucho: When it comes to congressional maps, Congress also has the power to curb partisan gerrymandering.

Alicia Bannon is editor in chief for State Court Report. She is also director of the Judiciary Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

Suggested Citation: Alicia Bannon, The Next Round of Partisan Gerrymandering Fights, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (Sep. 25, 2025), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/next-round-partisan-gerrymandering-fights