Polls are increasingly showing that Americans oppose gerrymandering based on political partisanship; a Rasmussen poll illustrates.
Overall, 86% of likely US voters considered it a “problem” when states draw congressional district lines to favor one party over the other, including 61% who deemed it a “very serious problem.”
Americans hold that for good reason. Here’s what our Constitution has to say on Congressional representation:
Article I, Section 2: The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative….
There’s nothing in there about setting up districts according to political partisanship or for any other reason.
Additionally, here’s what the 14th Amendment says:
Article 1: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
There’s nothing in there that authorizes a State to treat any of its citizens differently from any other of its citizens based on individual political holdings. That last clause makes the matter crystalline. Equal protection means exactly that. The Supreme Court has held as much, quite explicitly, in its speech and religion rulings. Congressional districts and the American privilege of voting are no different.
The only real way to stop gerrymandering is to divide a State into square districts of substantially equal populations, with district boundaries differing from straight lines only when the district abuts a neighboring State.
Some might argue, taking this argument a step further, that such strict district-drawing would favor urban area citizens over rural in terms of their collective power in government. That may be, but that isn’t the here and now; that’s a case better debated—politically, not in our courts—in two or three generations. Our courts aren’t in the business of speculation, only in adjudicating based on the text of our Constitution today.