America is currently at war over partisan gerrymandering. The Republican-controlled Texas legislature has just gerrymandered voting districts to create five more safe Republican US House seats, as demanded by Trump.

Then Missouri Republicans were ordered by Trump to enact a gerrymander to increase the states' disproportionate Republican minority from 6-2 to 7-1 by cutting Democratic-leaning Kansas City voting districts down the middle. Now JD Vance is urging Indiana Republicans to gerrymander the only two remaining Democratic House districts out of existence.

In response, California Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed a ballot measure that would temporarily suspend California's independent redistricting commission until 2030 and let the Democratic legislature redistrict Republicans out of five seats to match what Republicans have done in Texas.

A large majority of voters nationally don't think partisan gerrymandering should be legal. According to a recent YouGov poll, 69% of Americans think partisan gerrymandering should be illegal and only 9% think it should be legal.

Chief Justice John Roberts (and all of his Republican colleagues on the Supreme Court) disagree with this vast majority of Americans. In 2019, Roberts' 5-4 majority opinion in Rucho v Common Cause (joined by the four other Republicans on the Court) held that federal courts do not have the constitutional power to prevent partisan gerrymandering and restored blatantly partisan gerrymanders in North Carolin and Maryland.

Since Roberts' decision, partisan gerrymandering has exploded. According to Michael Li of the Brennan Center, partisan gerrymandering has given Republicans 16 extra seats in the House. Without that, Democrats would have a House majority and Republicans would not be able to pass the so-called "big beautiful bill" which has led to a government shutdown. As the Brennan Center states, "Gerrymandering decided House control."

Roberts' opinion conceded that partisan gerrymandering is “incompatible with democratic institutions” and “leads to results that reasonably seem unjust.” But Roberts then invented a procedural technicality to bar Federal courts from doing anything about it or to uphold the Constitutional principle of "one person, one vote." Roberts claimed that partisan gerrymandering is a so-called "political question" that Federal Courts have no right to question and must be........

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