The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a request that it intervene in states’ redistricting efforts that seek to empower one party over the other.
The nation’s highest court ruled Tuesday that manipulation of the electoral map, a practice known colloquially as gerrymandering, is a problem for state governments to solve, not the Supreme Court.
The justices made their decision 5 to 4, with the majority siding with Republicans in North Carolina and Democrats in Maryland, both of whom were accused by the political opposition of manipulating voting district lines to give their own parties an advantage in elections for the state legislature.
In another case, the court blocked, for the time being, the Trump administration efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, a once-a-decade count of all the people living in the United States, legally and otherwise.
The Supreme Court ruled the administration’s explanation, that the citizenship question was meant to better enforce the Voting Rights Act, was “more of a distraction” from the issue than an explanation.
Chief Justic John Roberts joined the court’s liberal justices in the 5-4 ruling.
Opponents of the citizenship question say it would intimidate non-citizens into not answering the census, ultimately leaving them underrepresented in Congress. The census is used to allot seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, and also to plan the distribution of federal funds.
Thursday is the final day of rulings by the Supreme Court before its summer break.