The Courts' Limits in Policing Gerrymandering and Election Law Clash.

Some judges increasingly say that determining the legality of political maps, particularly gerrymandering, is beyond their abilities to adjudicate. The North Carolina Supreme Court recently ruled that it could find no way to determine when even egregious gerrymanders cross the line between skewed but legal and unconstitutionally rigged. The effect was to give the Republican-led legislature carte blanche to draw new maps for 2024 elections that lock in GOP political dominance, even though the state’s electorate is split almost evenly between the two major parties. The US Supreme Court also ruled in 2019 that it could not devise a legal standard to regulate partisan gerrymandering, though it suggested that state courts could.