PHILADELPHIA — The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has selected a new congressional map that will shape power and politics in the state for the next decade, one that’s largely based on the current map and slightly favors Republicans.
In a 4-3 decision Wednesday, the court chose a map that was drawn by a Stanford professor and proposed by Democratic plaintiffs. It’s a major decision for the justices, one that will draw intense political scrutiny for the court’s elected Democratic majority.
Congressional maps are redrawn every decade to reflect changes in population, and Pennsylvania has a history of partisan gerrymandering — drawing the map to unfairly favor one political party over another. With the state losing one of its 18 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, the new districts will help determine control of Congress and how communities are represented in the years to come.
The “Carter map” chosen by the court, named after the lead Democratic voter who first filed the lawsuit that led to the court’s decision, was drawn by Stanford professor Jonathan Rodden, a well-known expert on redistricting and political geography. Rodden drew the map based on the current one, using a “least-change” approach.
The map creates nine districts that voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, and eight districts that voted for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, according to a detailed data analysis conducted for The Philadelphia Inquirer by the nonpartisan Princeton Gerrymandering Project. It slightly favors Republicans on multiple measures of partisan skew, according to the analysis.
Looking at the two-party vote share in the two most recent presidential and U.S. Senate elections, The Inquirer classifies six of the districts as strongly Republican, five as strongly Democratic, and three each as leaning Democratic and Republican. Unlike redistricting in some other states this year, the new Pennsylvania map doesn’t reduce the number of competitive swing seats.
Pennsylvania has a small Democratic voter registration edge, and the map largely reflects its swing-state status.
Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, applauded the ruling, calling it a “fair map that will result in a congressional delegation mirroring the citizenry of Pennsylvania.”
”With today’s decision, we could again send to Washington members of Congress elected in districts that are fairly drawn without favor to one party or the other,” he said in a statement.
But Republicans immediately criticized the court for selecting a map supported by a national Democratic group and for not following the recommendation of a conservative lower-court judge to select the map passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature.
“Unfortunately, the map chosen by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court today is nothing but a partisan ploy in a process that should be free of political bias,” state Rep. Seth Grove, of York, and House Republicans’ point person on elections, said in a statement. Grove had introduced the map that was later amended and passed by the Legislature — and vetoed by Wolf as a gerrymander.
“Obviously, the message was clear by the courts: It doesn’t matter what process the General Assembly or the people use,” Grove said, “we care more about the opinions of partisan national groups.”
While Republicans lambasted the process, the map itself could be good for the party, Republican strategist Chris Nicholas said. “I could see a GOP 10-7 ratio after November,” he said, pointing to possible Republican pick-up opportunities in Northeastern Pennsylvania and outside Pittsburgh.
Much of the political landscape is unchanged in the state’s electoral battlegrounds, with competitive districts remaining the same and roughly as competitive as before.
The Bucks-County-based 1st District, for example, where Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick has won voters who lean slightly Democratic in other races, has almost the same partisan scores as before. Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan’s 6th District in Chester County is also essentially the same.
Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright, one of the state’s most vulnerable incumbents because of the pro-Trump lean of his district, will have a new one that is barely more Democratic than before.
Other competitive districts that will continue to have similar partisan makeups include Republican Rep. Scott Perry’s Central Pennsylvania district becoming slightly redder, and Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb’s district in the Pittsburgh suburbs becoming slightly bluer.
An exception could be Rep. Susan Wild, a vulnerable Democrat in Northeastern Pennsylvania, whose district will go from 51% Democratic to 51% Republican, according to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project analysis. That’s a slight shift, but small variations can matter in swing districts.
The map delivers an important victory for Democrats in terms of where incumbents fall in the new boundaries: Only two incumbents, Republican Reps. Fred Keller and G.T. Thompson, are drawn together. While congressional candidates aren’t required to live in a district to run there, they usually do — meaning Keller and Thompson may have to decide whether to run against each other, retire or move. (The redrawn district is made up almost entirely of Thompson’s current district.)
No incumbent Democrats will have to make that choice, including in Southeastern Pennsylvania, which Democrats had worried about. With the state losing a district, two incumbents had to be drawn together. Keller and Thompson’s pairing spares Democrats in the southeast from having to run against each other. It also means Republican Rep. Dan Meuser won’t face off against Cartwright, the vulnerable Democrat whose constituents voted twice for Trump.
The map also gives Republicans a win by keeping Pittsburgh together in one district. That leaves one deep-blue district in the city and a Democratic-leaning swing district in the suburbs. Many Democrats had hoped to divide Pittsburgh to create two blue seats, and several maps proposed to the court, including one submitted by Wolf, did just that.
The Harrisburg region also remains largely unchanged, along with the Hazelton-Wilkes-Barre-Scranton region, which Democrats had feared could be split up.
The court also imposed a new election calendar for the May 17 primary, leaving that election day in place while moving the deadlines for candidates to file paperwork to get on the ballot.
Wednesday’s decision followed a breakdown of the normal redistricting process, which is supposed to occur as legislation: The state Legislature passes a map and sends it to the governor to sign.
Not this time.
Republicans who control the Legislature didn’t work with Democratic lawmakers when they introduced a map and then amended it — without public scrutiny — and passed it. Meanwhile, Wolf refused to negotiate directly over the districts, instead putting out a set of general principles and criticizing Republican maps without releasing his own specific ideas for districts until shortly before the end of the process.
With the legislative process failing, a group of Democratic voters and a group of math and science professors filed separate lawsuits that were later combined. At the state Commonwealth Court’s request, the parties in the case — including Wolf, Republican and Democratic lawmakers, and good-government groups — submitted 13 proposals for the new map.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court then took over the case. Many observers had long predicted a political stalemate over redistricting that would end up before the Supreme Court.
That put the court in the crosshairs once again, and in the uncomfortable position of having to once again make not just a legal decision, but a highly political one.
The map the court chose came from the Democratic voters who brought the case in the first place. They’re represented by national Democratic lawyer Marc Elias and supported by an affiliate of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, led by Eric Holder, an attorney general under then-President Barack Obama.
Elected Democrats hold a 5-2 majority on the Supreme Court, which has drawn intense criticism from Republicans since its 2018 decision to overturn Pennsylvania’s congressional map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The court drew a new map. Since then, Republicans have continued to attack the court for decisions they see as partisan judicial overreach, including rulings in election-related cases in 2020.
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