Supreme Court Lets North Carolina Keep its Gerrymandered Districts For Now

It was only a few days ago that I last blogged about gerrymandering. Things seemed to be going in the right direction in terms of court decisions to slow down the blatantly political redistricting that has been going on over the past several years throughout the country. This evening, however, the U.S. Supreme Court has put a hold on a lower court decision that would have required North Carolina to redraw its Congressional District boundaries prior to this year's election. The Washington Post has the early story:

The Supreme Court said Thursday night that North Carolina does not immediately have to redraw its congressional district maps, meaning the 2018 elections will be held in districts that a lower court found unconstitutional.

The court granted a request from North Carolina’s Republican legislative leaders to put the lower court’s ruling on hold. The decision was not unexpected, because generally, the Supreme Court is reluctant to require the drawing of new districts before it has had a chance to review a lower court’s ruling that such an action is warranted.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would not have granted the request.

So we now have to wait to see whether in fact the lower court ruling will eventually be upheld. In general, though, this does seem like a good sign of things to come. I sincerely hope that I am wrong about that.