WASHINGTON (CN) - Even with two inconclusive decisions from the Supreme Court last month in cases that could have cleared a legal path to ending partisan gerrymandering, a renewed challenge in North Carolina and a turn to the states could give advocates more options going forward.
"I've been fighting these cases for four years and I'm certainly not giving up," Ruth Greenwood, senior legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center said on a conference call last week.
The Supreme Court did not reach the merits of two partisan gerrymandering cases it heard during its most recent term, one brought by Wisconsin Democrats and another by Maryland Republicans, continuing a trend of the high court struggling to develop a workable standard by which it should judge such cases.
A majority of the justices said the federal district court that found a Wisconsin state map was drawn to systematically favor Republicans over Democrats did not give enough consideration to whether the group of Democrats that brought the case had standing.
The court also issued a short, unsigned opinion upholding the Maryland federal court's decision not to grant the Republican voters who challenged the state map a preliminary injunction in the case.
On a conference call last week, Greenwood said the Wisconsin group plans to add more plaintiffs in more districts in the state in an effort to establish they have the requisite standing to bring the suit.
While the Supreme Court's declining to address the merits of the two cases was disappointing to advocates of redistricting reform, the court could weigh in again as early as this winter in a case many believe have has a better chance of convincing the justices to decide whether and how courts should evaluate partisan gerrymandering claims.
The challenge would come from North Carolina, where a federal court rejected a Republican-drawn map that it said would have preserved a sizable majority for the GOP. The case is a consolidation of two challenges to the Republican map and includes as plaintiffs both advocacy groups and voters.
The Supreme Court on June 25 sent the case back to the North Carolina court so it could further consider whether the plaintiffs have standing and Greenwood said she expects the district court to issue its decision within the next two months.
This would make it possible for the case to go before the Supreme Court in the upcoming term and Thomas Wolf, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, said its facts align with concerns some of the justices expressed during oral arguments in the Maryland and Wisconsin cases.
"There, many of the justices seemed troubled by the hypothetical of the redistricting plan that was drawn expressly to disadvantage one party," Wolf said in an interview. "That is North Carolina. That is the hypothetical. That is the fact pattern that seemed to trouble them the most."
During the debate on the proposed North Carolina map, North Carolina State Rep. David Lewis, who led the redistricting effort, admitted the map would "produce an opportunity to elect ten Republican members of Congress," according to the North Carolina court's opinion.
"I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats," Lewis said during debate on the map, according to the opinion. "So I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country."