Earlier this month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the state’s egregious gerrymander—which in 2012 gave Republicans 13 out of 18 of the state’s seats in the House of Representatives although Democrats won a majority of the statewide vote—was unconstitutional. After the (also heavily gerrymandered) Republican state legislature returned with a similarly illegal map, the court imposed one of its own based on careful analysis intended to make the drawing of districts more representative. The Republican response has been to threaten to attack the independence of the courts. This is the GOP in 2018 in a nutshell: a party utterly contemptuous of democratic norms and palpably terrified of an even remotely fair political fight.

It should be noted that although the new map has been frequently been described as “favoring” the Democrats, it still gives an advantage to Republicans, simply a much less egregious one. Republican attacks on the court as being out-of-control partisans are pure projection. The new map still leans Republican because almost any attempt to draw contiguous districts will disadvantage the Democrats, whose supporters are disproportionately clustered in the state’s two biggest cities. It’s pretty hard to sustain a charge of lawless partisanship given that the new map doesn’t even result in the Democratic Party having an unfair advantage.

Some conservatives have tried to couch their self-interested arguments as matters of procedural principle. For example, Jay Cost of The Weekly Standard tweeted that he believed that “[t]he PA GOP’s gerrymander was too aggressive, and undermined representative government in the state,” but that “[t]he PA Supreme Court’s ruling was a partisan power grab that undermines the legislature’s rightful role in the process.” Only the first argument, however, is correct.

Article I, Section 5 of the Pennsylvania constitution requires that “Elections shall be free and equal.” Interpreting the state constitution is the court’s job. At a minimum, it is reasonable to see a violation of free and equal elections when the legislature draws districts with both the intent and effect of massively overrepresenting one group of voters and massively underrepresenting another. The same is true of the court’s remedy: a map that, while slightly Republican-tilting, much more fairly represents the will of the state’s voters.

Arguments that the legislature has to be the final arbiter, even when it is acting in bad faith, are simply arguments that, even if illegal, there is no remedy for the gerrymandering. In fact this is the kind of case where judicial action is most appropriate. The courts are not imposing any substantive views on the public; they are merely upholding the democratic process, as required by the state constitution, by ensuring that election results more fairly reflect the voters’ will.