Bye, Bye Race Discrimination in Redistricting

What we are left with now is that gerrymandering for race is unconstitutional while gerrymandering for partisan advantage is constitutional.  The Supreme Court got into this morass in the sixties, and now it has gotten the Federal courts out of the business of the policing of electoral districts in the states.  This is all to the good, as the racial spoils system instituted in the sixties was always grossly unconstitutional.  The days are long gone when blacks could not run for elective office solely due to their skin color.  Our divisions when it comes to politics are partisan and not racial.  A good day for the Constitution.  Go here to read the text of the decision.  Justice Thomas is majestic in his brief concurring opinion:

JUSTICE THOMAS, with whom JUSTICE GORSUCH joins,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion in full. This Court should never
have interpreted §2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to ef-
fectively give racial groups “an entitlement to roughly pro-
portional representation.” Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S.
30, 93 (1986) (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment); see
ante, at 23–24. By doing so, the Court led legislatures and
courts to “systematically divid[e] the country into electoral
districts along racial lines.” Holder v. Hall, 512 U. S. 874,
905 (1994) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment). “Blacks
[we]re drawn into ‘black districts’ and given ‘black repre-
sentatives’; Hispanics [we]re drawn into Hispanic districts
and given ‘Hispanic representatives’; and so on.” Ibid. That
interpretation rendered §2 “repugnant to any nation that
strives for the ideal of a color-blind Constitution.” Id., at
905–906. Today’s decision should largely put an end to this
“disastrous misadventure” in voting-rights jurisprudence.

As I explained more than 30 years ago, I would go further
and hold that §2 of the Voting Rights Act does not regulate
districting at all. See id., at 922–923. The relevant text
prohibits States from imposing or applying a “voting quali-
fication,” “prerequisite to voting,” or “standard, practice, or
procedure,” in a manner that results in a denial or abridge-
ment of the right to vote based on race. 52 U. S. C.
§10301(a). How States draw district lines does not fall
within any of those three categories. Holder, 512 U. S., at
922–923 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); Allen v. Milligan, 599
U. S. 1, 46 (2023) (THOMAS, J., dissenting). The words in §2
instead “reach only ‘enactments that regulate citizens’ ac-
cess to the ballot or the processes for counting a ballot’; they
‘do not include a State’s . . . choice of one districting scheme
over another.’ ” Ibid. (quoting Holder, 512 U. S., at 945
(opinion of THOMAS, J.)). Therefore, no §2 challenge to districting should ever succeed.