Last month, the Supreme Court’s Republican majority reinstated Texas’s Republican gerrymander after a lower federal court struck it down. The plaintiffs in that case presented considerable evidence that Texas’s gerrymander was enacted, at least in part, to racially gerrymander some parts of the state. But the Court’s Republican majority deemed this evidence insufficient.

Now, the Supreme Court is about to decide a similar case, Tangipa v. Newsom, which challenges California’s attempt to offset Texas’s Republican gerrymander by enacting a Democratic gerrymander that cancels out the GOP’s gains in Texas. While there is much less evidence that the California gerrymander was racially motivated than there was in the Texas case, the California GOP has produced some evidence that at least points in that direction. If the Supreme Court had struck down the Texas gerrymander, it’s possible to imagine a fair judge also concluding that California’s new maps must go.

But no competent lawyer, and certainly no reasonable judge, could conclude both that the Texas gerrymander is lawful and that the California maps are an illegal racial gerrymander. Tangipa, in other words, is a test of the Republican justices’ honesty. If they actually believe what they said in the Texas case, which is known as Abbott v. LULAC, they will deny the Republican Party’s attempt to undo California’s gerrymander.

Alternatively, if they rule in favor of this challenge, it will remove any doubt that this Court is trying to rig the game to benefit the Republican Party.

The evidence of racial gerrymandering in the LULAC and Tangipa cases, compared

Before we dive into the facts of these two gerrymandering cases, it’s helpful to understand two different ways that states can gerrymander their legislative maps.........

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