Trump Isn't the Only One to Blame for the Gerrymander Mess

New York Times

3 days ago

President Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Texas Republicans have reignited the gerrymandering wars. The brazen power grab in Texas pushed Democrats to start their own efforts to unravel independent commissions established by voters, and now it's threatening to tilt the whole country into chaos.
Mr. Trump and his G.O.P. allies are surely the instigators, but the true architect of this mess, the person who bears as much or more responsibility for it, is Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative Supreme Court. Over several years of rulings, this court has effectively rolled back laws that had for generations protected the right to vote.
The current frenzy is just the latest example of the most antidemocratic feature of American politics in 2025. It's the toxic combination of the conservative Supreme Court majority and a political party that believes longstanding norms are for suckers and that lacks any commitment to fair play and majority rule.
Since he joined Ronald Reagan's Justice Department in 1981 as a young foot soldier in the nascent conservative legal movement, Chief Justice Roberts has pursued the patient, steady bleeding of the Voting Rights Act. In 2013, he wrote the 5-to-4 decision in Shelby County v. Holder that effectively ended preclearance, the Voting Rights Act's most effective enforcement mechanism, and liberated states, many clustered in the South, from federal oversight of legislative maps.
But the case that did the most to bring us to our current impasse came six years later, Rucho v. Common Cause. The gerrymander mayhem was created by the Rucho case. In that decision — also 5 to 4 and written by the chief justice — the court ruled that partisan gerrymandering is a nonjusticiable political question and shuttered the federal courts to future claims. The decision incentivized extreme gerrymanders nationwide and left voters all but powerless to challenge them.
The chaos we face today could have been prevented. Instead, the court enabled it. At a time when Americans might look to federal courts as honest brokers, the Supreme Court's conservative majority kicked away the best, even last, chance at enforcing a national solution to a national problem.
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