Abortion ruling puts spotlight on gerrymandered legislatures
AP News
In overturning a half-century of nationwide legal protection for abortion, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Roe v. Wade had been wrongly decided and that it was time to return the issue of abortion to the peoples elected representatives in the states.
Whether those elected officials are truly representative of the people is a matter of debate, thanks to another high court decision that has enabled control of state legislatures to be skewed to the right or left.
In June 2019, three years before its momentous abortion ruling, the Supreme Court decided that it has no role in restraining partisan gerrymandering, in which Republicans or Democrats manipulate the boundaries of voting districts to give their candidates an edge.
The result is that many legislatures are more heavily partisan than the states population as a whole. Gerrymandering again flourished as politicians used the 2020 census data to redraw districts that could benefit their party both for this years elections and the next decade.
In some swing states with Republican-led legislatures, such as Michigan and Wisconsin, arguably gerrymandering really is the primary reason that abortion is likely to be illegal, said Chris Warshaw, a political scientist at George Washington University who analyzes redistricting data.