CASE SUMMARY

In late 2013, a group of Maryland voters filed a federal lawsuit challenging the state’s congressional redistricting plan as a pro-Democrat partisan gerrymander that violated the Article I, § 2 of the U.S. Constitution, the Elections Clause, 1st and 14th Amendments. After an initial SCOTUS decision on procedural issues and subsequent remand back to the district court (Benisek v. Lamone I), the federal district court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and the defendants appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. SCOTUS consolidated this appeal with another partisan gerrymandering appeal out of North Carolina, Rucho v. Common Cause.

  • On June 27, 2019, SCOTUS conclusively held that partisan gerrymandering claims presented nonjusticiable political questions that can’t be decided by federal courts. The Court explained that resolving partisan gerrymandering claims required a “clear, manageable, and politically neutral” standard for review which had not emerged despite decades of litigation on the issue. Having already held in previous cases that partisan considerations when redistricting are unavoidable and constitutionally permissible to some degree, the Court found these claims impose upon federal courts the vague and inherently policy-based task of determining when partisan dominance is “too much” – a determination that they aren’t equipped to make in a legally sound and consistent manner. As further support for their ruling, the Court identified several alternative means to address partisan gerrymandering, including the passage of state constitutional amendments and statutes as several States had already done, or Congressional action via the U.S. Constitution’s Elections Clause.

Significance: Partisan gerrymandering claims are non-justiciable political questions that cannot be decided by federal courts.

[Note: This was the second series of litigation in this case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court; for information and case documents from the earlier stages of this lawsuit, visit the case page for Benisek v. Lamone I (2018).]

CASE LIBRARY

U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland - 1:13-cv-03233

U.S. Supreme Court - 18-726 [139 S.Ct. 2484]