There certainly is a lot of white noise drowning out other news and some of the most important of that news involves the pushback against the conservative war against the franchise. From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

In a split decision, the seven-member panel sided with a group of voters who contended the state’s 18 U.S. House of Representatives districts were drawn as an unconstitutional gerrymander that discriminates against Democrats. The justices ordered the Republican-led legislature draw up a new map immediately, a move almost certainly to upend the political and campaign structure just months before the primary election… The ruling is the latest legal affirmation of partisan gerrymandering — where political maps are drawn to favor one party at the expense of another — amid a wave of scrutiny on the issue across the nation. A number of lawsuits have sought to get maps redrawn in several states, and the U.S. Supreme Court is considering partisan gerrymandering cases from Wisconsin and Baltimore. Earlier this month, a federal court struck down North Carolina’s congressional map, the first time a federal court has found a congressional map an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. In Pennsylvania, Republicans have consistently won the same 13 of 18 U.S. House seats, even as votes in the state remain about evenly split between the two parties.

The significant point in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s hammer blow decision is the fact that the court pretty plainly has had enough of that state’s legislature. It mandates that the legislature come up with a new map by February 9 for primary elections to be held in May. And, because the state supreme court based its ruling on the state constitution, any attempt by Pennsylvania Republicans to appeal this ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court for the kind of stay that SCOTUS imposed on the North Carolina gerrymandering case last week is probably foreclosed.

It is increasingly clear at least that the issue of partisan gerrymandering is going to have a definitive resolution sometime in the next year. The courts—both state and federal—are fed up with it.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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