Associated Press, printed in The Washington Post, December 11, 2003

Supreme Court Hears Democrats' Complaint About GOP Gerrymandering House Districts
By Lara Jakes Jordan
Associated Press


The Supreme Court used Pennsylvania's congressional map yesterday to consider whether the redrawing of election districts by states has become too political.

At issue is a 19-district map that was prepared last year by the Republican-controlled state Legislature, and forced three Democratic lawmakers out of office. The high court debated whether drawing districts to favor one party can be constitutional or a political matter best left for states.

"How unfair is unfair?" Justice Antonin Scalia asked.

"If a party is getting two-thirds of the seats with less than half of the vote, I submit that's unfair," answered Paul M. Smith, who argued on behalf of a group of Democrats.

Republicans hold 12 of Pennsylvania's 19 congressional seats, but Democrats have a 445,000-voter edge over the GOP in the state. Previously, the Republicans had 11 seats to the Democrats' 10. Because of the state's slower-than-average population growth, Pennsylvania lost two of its 21 U.S. House seats after the 2000 Census.

The Supreme Court has made it almost impossible to win a claim that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional, although justices left the door open to such claims in a splintered 1986 ruling.

The case argued yesterday, Vieth v. Jubelirer, is important because of the stakes involved in boundary-drawing for political parties. States must redraw boundaries after every census to reflect population shifts. Legislatures and political parties have begun using sophisticated computer analyses to ferret out the best places to pick up more seats.

If the court makes it easier to challenge maps, some states could be forced to redraw their districts, which could threaten Republican control of the House.

The case "puts the Supreme Court in a terrible bind," said Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University. "The court has historically avoided political questions, and respected the public to render its own judgment on the propriety of political maneuvers or tactics."

Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General J. Bart DeLone, defending the Republican map, shrugged off whether politics played a part in drawing the lines.

"There's nothing wrong with it," DeLone told the court. "I think you can assume there was a political motivation. And frankly, we don't have a problem with that. The question is whether or not [Democrats] have been shut out of the process."

Justice John Paul Stevens criticized Republicans for failing to justify the political gerrymandering that the Democrats charge violates the "one person, one vote" requirement protected in the Constitution.

"When you have a very strangely shaped district, the burden is on you to point out one neutral justification for it," Stevens said. "But you can't point to anything."