Republicans' redistricting push is partisan, not race-based | Opinion

Republicans and Democrats are locked in a redistricting arms race, with both parties seeking to redraw congressional maps to gain more seats than the other.

As this battle escalates, Democrats and their allies have increasingly tried to equate Republican partisan gerrymandering with racial gerrymandering – a far more serious constitutional offense.

But racial redistricting and partisan redistricting are not the same thing. The Supreme Court can intervene when districts are drawn explicitly on the basis of race because such maps are unconstitutional. It has no comparable authority over partisan gerrymandering, however corrosive it might be. That leaves Congress as the only institution capable of meaningfully addressing partisan redistricting abuses, though there is little reason for confidence that lawmakers will do the right thing.

Racial gerrymandering and partisan gerrymandering are different issues

Gerrymandering is a dirty word, and for good reason. It is the practice of using political power to stack the electoral deck in your favor and against opposition voters. Yet partisan gerrymanders, however distasteful, are perfectly legal. That does not make them just, but if state legislators want to carve up districts into monstrous shapes – salamanders included – to preserve narrow majorities, the law largely permits it.

Racial gerrymanders are another matter entirely. They are unconstitutional, as the Supreme Court recently reaffirmed in Louisiana v. Callais. Democrats have portrayed that ruling, which held that districts cannot be drawn predominantly on the basis of race, as another front in a Republican war on fair maps. But that framing deliberately blurs an essential distinction.

Racial districting violates the Constitution. Partisan districting, however corrosive, does not. Political frustration does not change constitutional reality.

The Supreme Court’s decision is by no means a partisan one. The case has been developing for years, long before Texas kicked off the latest redistricting arms race.

While the April 29 ruling is certainly timely, Louisiana v. Callais did not appear from thin air. The case was originally argued at the nation's highest court the prior term, with a second round of arguments in October to address additional constitutional questions.

To be sure, Republican lawmakers might have escalated the gerrymandering battle, but Democrats are hardly strangers to using the practice when it benefits them.

Only Congress can address partisan districting

The Supreme Court’s ruling may not be partisan, but it does carry partisan implications. The decision has only intensified the redistricting arms race by spurring Republicans to challenge Democrat-favored maps they view as racial gerrymanders, while also giving Democrats additional political cover to draw increasingly absurd districts of their own.

While the court has added more fuel to these partisan battles, it cannot resolve them. The Constitution is silent on partisan gerrymandering, leaving it largely to the states and Congress to sort out. If meaningful change is ever going to come to the redistricting landscape, it will require congressional action.

Besides congressional intervention, the only real path back is some form of mutual restraint between the two major parties. But as recent clashes have made clear, escalation appears far more likely than disarmament in the current political era.

These redistricting battles are only made worse by the fact that, in the Trump era, neither party seems especially committed to preserving political norms, particularly Republicans in Texas, who chose to redraw congressional maps mid-decade in hopes of protecting their House majority.

The best remaining hope is that, after witnessing the chaos this redistricting arms race is creating, both parties eventually conclude that endless escalation serves neither side’s long-term interests and pursue either legislative reform or an informal understanding to stop the spiral.

Otherwise, there is little reason to believe that these retaliatory gerrymanders will end anytime soon.

Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.