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BREAKING: Supreme Court's conservative rule 5–4 that the federal judiciary cannot rein in partisan gerrymanders. This is the nightmare scenario for voting rights advocates. supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf…
The Supreme Court's decision is a crushing defeat for voting rights. It is hard to overstate the impact of this ruling. Federal courts are now powerless to stop politicians from drawing gerrymanders that indefinitely entrench their party's power. A fiasco for democracy.
Voting rights advocates spent years laying the groundwork for SCOTUS to put constitutional limits on partisan gerrymanders. But they were relying on Justice Kennedy's vote. Now he's gone, replaced by Kavanaugh, and the conservative bloc shut them out of federal court forever.
Today, we only have a taste of the extreme partisan gerrymanders that mapmakers can draw using sophisticated technology. SCOTUS' decision ensures that gerrymanders will get much worse in the coming years—and federal courts can do nothing to stop them.
Some stinging legal realism in Kagan's dissent, one of the best of her career. 
SCOTUS says federal courts are powerless to stop legislators whose goal, in drawing districts, is to dilute votes for the minority party as much as possible, in order to entrench the majority party's power indefinitely.
Chief Justice Roberts' majority opinion notes all kinds of democratic efforts to rein in partisan gerrymanders—but does not note that SCOTUS may strike them all down as unconstitutional. slate.com/news-and-polit…
The next round of redistricting, and the elections that follow it, are going to be incredibly ugly. If you think partisan gerrymandering is bad today, SCOTUS just ensured that it's going to get vastly worse.
This is correct. And it's why Republicans fought so hard for Justice Kavanaugh, whose vote makes today's ruling possible.
