Nicholas Stephanopoulos

Chat: How a Supreme Court case could turbocharge gerrymandering How much worse can gerrymandering get? Will the Supreme Court strike down a landmark voting rights law? We asked two experts.

How much worse can gerrymandering get? Will the Supreme Court strike down a landmark voting rights law? We asked two experts.

An informative interview with @justinlevitt.bsky.social & @profnickstephan.bsky.social.

Among other things, they discuss how the Supreme Court could make seemingly small changes to the Voting Rights Act that make VRA§2 redistricting lawsuits virtually impossible without deeming it unconstitutional

After Bost, standing could largely disappear as an issue in election law cases -- at least if plaintiffs can get a candidate to join the suit.

If only we had known this in Whitford, the whole history of partisan gerrymandering might be different.

Curbing Misalignment in American Politics A broad range of views on democracy to help break the stalemate caused by partisan conflict.

I wrote this essay for NYU's democracy project on the critical need to curb "misalignment" in American politics.

Notably, misalignment is pervasive even when (as in 2024) the presidential candidate preferred by voters wins the election.

democracyproject.org/posts/curbin...

In policy terms, the usual absence of tradeoffs means that line-drawers can often have it all—maps that simultaneously comply with traditional criteria, treat the major parties fairly, lead to competitive elections, and properly represent minority voters.

Legally, it bolsters plaintiffs alleging partisan gerrymandering or racial vote dilution, because their objectives can typically be achieved without sacrificing other goals.

In most cases, progress along one dimension (like compactness, partisan fairness, or minority representation) requires no regression along another axis. This conclusion has sweeping implications for redistricting law and policy.

These ensembles cover all electoral levels for seven priority states as well as congressional maps for all states with two or more U.S. House districts.

The Article finds that, contrary to the conventional wisdom of courts and scholars, redistricting tradeoffs are generally weak to nonexistent.

This Article is the first to rigorously analyze the existence and extent of redistricting tradeoffs. The Article relies on ensembles of billions of district maps generated randomly by cutting-edge computer algorithms.

Here's the abstract:

The law of redistricting is built on the assumption that tradeoffs among line-drawing criteria are pervasive. This view helps explain crucial elements of partisan gerrymandering, racial vote dilution, and racial gerrymandering doctrine.

I just posted "Redistricting Without Tradeoffs," forthcoming in @columlrev.bsky.social, on SSRN.

The article relies on huge sets of computer-generated district maps to show that tradeoffs between redistricting criteria are much less common than is often thought.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Watch how gerrymandering has changed the partisan skew of the U.S. House and state legislatures with the newest PlanScore update!

Check out this cool new feature on PlanScore, showing the U.S. House's aggregate bias over time.

Here's 2024 (with estimated scores for the states that have redrawn their maps since then):

planscore.org#!2026-ushouse

PlanScore PlanScore is a first-of-its-kind gerrymandering scoring service for new district plans, allowing users to upload maps and instantly receive projected data about their partisan consequences. You can al...

PlanScore has been updated to include 2024 scores for all congressional, state senate, and state house plans. Check it out:

planscore.org#!2024-stateh...

Victory in our New York VRA case against Newburgh!

The Court of Appeals unanimously held that the town lacks capacity to facially challenge the statute.

So our case continues to trial, and the dilution of the town's minority voters' influence may still be fixed.

www.nycourts.gov/ctapps/Decis...

What an irony it would be if Republicans, by initiating this unnecessary and unprecedented mid-decade redistricting war, ended up costing themselves the House.

Possibly of more interest to election law folks: The court really understood the various measures of partisan fairness. It correctly dismissed the state's preferred metrics, partisan bias and the mean-median difference, as inapplicable in an uncompetitive state like Utah.

My response to Sachs and Kleinfeld's article advocating parents voting for their children is now up.

My idea is to have young adults -- not parents -- vote on behalf of children due to their greater partisan and ideological similarity.

ndlawreview.org/give-young-a...

- More in the weeds, but the plaintiffs say the third Gingles precondition isn't satisfied in CA because minority-preferred candidates often win statewide races. But this analysis is always regional, not statewide, and the plaintiffs offer no more localized data.

- The plaintiffs want CA to return to its 2022 map. But their own argument is that 14 of that map's districts are unlawful racial gerrymanders! So that map is almost as bad, under the plaintiffs' theory, as the new map -- and can't be a valid remedy to any legal problem.

- Where's the plaintiffs' alternative map? CA's obvious defense is that its primary goal was partisan, not racial. Alexander says that, to refute a partisan defense, plaintiffs need a map that achieves the state's partisan aim without fixating on race. So where's their map?

The Complaint Filed By Republicans Against the Maps Created by California's Prop 50 Raising Racial Gerrymandering and Intentional Discrimination Claims Faces an Uphill Battle, Especially Given 2026 Ti... You can find the complaint here. The main argument in the case is that plaintiffs engaged in a racial gerrymander by making race the predominant factor in drawing district lines without s compelling r...

Some more problems with this CA racial gerrymandering claim:

- The suit's main evidence is some commentary by a mapmaker. But it's the LEGISLATURE'S intent that counts here, not what a line-drawer may have thought.

electionlawblog.org?p=152920

Mark Cuban Joins Legal Fight Against Dark Money and Super PACs Through a brief authored by the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School, Mark Cuban and 4 other billionaires argue in favor of Maine's SuperPAC law.

Nice story about the "billionaires' brief" filed by @electionclinic.bsky.social arguing on behalf of Mark Cuban and others that Maine's limit on Super PAC donations doesn't materially burden their speech and serves critical state interests.

www.sportico.com/law/analysis...

HLS's Election Law Clinic filed this amicus brief yesterday on behalf of Mark Cuban and other wealthy Americans, urging the First Circuit to uphold Maine's limit on Super PAC contributions.

Not all rich people want to distort elections in their favor!

www.hlselectionlaw.org/s/20251029_F...

To clarify, this lawsuit is under the NY Constitution, NOT the NY Voting Rights Act (which only applies to political subdivisions in NY). The suit argues that the NY Constitution should be read to adopt the same vote dilution standard as the NYVRA.

2. The SG's proposal would doom Section 2 suits not just in the South but everywhere. That's because there's always SOME political objective a new majority-minority district would compromise. If a state named the right goal, no plaintiff could satisfy the first Gingles prong.

More Concerns About the SG’s Proposal in Callais #ELB I’ve already discussed a number of problems with the SG’s proposal in Callais (that plaintiffs’ demonstrative maps be required to achieve jurisdictions’ political objectives). Upon further reflection,...

Some more concerns about the SG's proposal in Callais:

1. At present, the first Gingles prong focuses on the availability of remedies. The SG's proposal would make it a probe for racial predominance -- the crux of the distinct theory of racial gerrymandering.

electionlawblog.org?p=152738

Competitive WI map

This is a nice story about our ongoing anti-competitive gerrymandering suit against Wisconsin's congressional map.

I like the demonstrative map in the piece -- look how much more competitive WI's districts could be!

urbanmilwaukee.com/2025/10/22/d...

Section 2’s Legislative History Refutes the SG’s Proposal #ELB I’ve previously noted a number of problems with the SG’s proposal in Callais, under which demonstrative maps would have to achieve the enacted plan’s political goals in order to satisfy the first Ging...

Another problem with the SG's proposal in Callais is that it's refuted by Section 2's legislative history.

Lots of participants in the '82 hearings thought of the SG's idea that political goals excuse racial vote dilution. And they all believed the idea didn't apply.

electionlawblog.org?p=152656

Misleading Claims About Affected Districts #ELB Toward the end of his argument in Callais, Hashim Mooppan seemed to assert that neutering Section 2 would affect only about fifteen congressional districts. In his words, “there are only 15 majority-B...

The deputy SG drastically understated the number of districts that would be stripped of legal protection under the administration's proposal in Callais.

He said about 15 districts would be affected -- the actual number is close to 70.

electionlawblog.org?p=152614