The Supreme Court has never struck down a voting district as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. A ruling allowing such challenges could revolutionize American politics.

Wednesday’s arguments provided little information about whether the justices are prepared to take that step. Indeed, if arguments in October in the earlier case, a Democratic challenge of a Republican map from Wisconsin, had heartened opponents of extreme partisan gerrymandering, Wednesday’s arguments in the Maryland case only served to confuse them.



Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who probably holds the crucial vote in both cases, returned to a theme he had pursued in the arguments in the Wisconsin case, asking whether a law that required partisan gerrymandering in so many words would violate the Constitution.

Steven M. Sullivan, Maryland’s solicitor general, said it would.

Justice Kennedy asked, “How is this case different?” Mr. Sullivan said the redistricting law did not expressly call for a partisan advantage.

Justice Kennedy was not satisfied. “So if you hide the evidence of what you’re doing, then you’re going to prevail?” he asked.

The court’s surprise announcement in December that it would hear the second partisan gerrymandering case, Benisek v. Lamone, No. 17-333, led to much speculation about what the move meant for the challengers in the Wisconsin case, Gill v. Whitford, No. 16-1161. But Wednesday’s argument did almost nothing to clear up the mystery of why the justices decided to hear a second case.

If there was a hint about where the court was headed in the Wisconsin case, it came from Justice Breyer, who suggested that the court schedule a new round of arguments in both cases, along with one from North Carolina, in the term that will start in October. His question suggested that at least some of the challengers could not demonstrate that they had suffered the sort of direct injury that gave them standing to sue.