section_path: Twenty-first century/Gerrymandering
section_name: Gerrymandering
paragraph_text: Gerrymandering
  
  The Republicans took initiative in pushing state redistricting in their favor using the results of the 2010 United States Census. They implemented the Redistricting Majority Project, or REDMAP, which was aimed to redistrict states where Republicans were in control of the district maps to push for stronger Republican representation, typically through partisan gerrymandering. This was a contributing factor to the Republicans gaining control of the U.S. House by winning over 33 seats in the 2012 United States House of Representatives elections.
  
  These new Republican-drawn district maps were met by several lawsuits challenging their validity. The Roberts Court has never struck down an election law for infringing suffrage or Equal Protection rights. On the other hand, it struck down the Voting Rights Act pre-clearance regime in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), which existed to prevent disenfranchisement by states. It has also not acted on partisan gerrymandering. As a whole, according to Huq, these changes shift the institutional equilibrium to "enable the replication of the system of one-party dominance akin to one that characterized the American South for much of the twentieth century". However, this has not always been the norm. In June 2023, the court ruled 5–4 to uphold rulings of the lower court which used Voting Rights Act of 1965 to instruct the state of Alabama to draw a second majority-black congressional district, which was hailed as a win for voting rights advocates. The court ruled 6–3 that state courts can adjudicate matters related to federal elections held in their state and the North Carolina Supreme Court was allowed to adjudicate whether the congressional map drawn by the North Carolina Legislature complied with the state constitution, because the United States Constitution "does not insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review." The court rejected the Independent state legislature theory, which contended that state legislatures have "effectively unchecked authority" to draw maps according to their wishes.