Noah Feldman, Columnist

Justices Punt on Gerrymandering, But Coach Kagan Has a Plan

The case goes back to the lower courts, where the plaintiffs would be smart to employ her strategy.

June 18, 2018 at 3:54 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday kept the much-watched partisan gerrymandering case alive – in a most unusual way. The justices sent the claim by Wisconsin Democrats that Republicans violated the Constitution in the drawing of state assembly voting districts back to the lower court. They want to see whether the plaintiffs can prove that they were individually harmed by having their votes diluted within their own districts. If they can do that, their case will almost certainly return to the Supreme Court.

This was a setback for the plaintiffs, who had hoped Justice Anthony Kennedy would rule for them this time. But it wasn’t a disaster, because the court didn’t say their partisan gerrymandering claims had no merit, either.