Vox - A district court panel threw out Virginia's map of Congressional districts, finding that one district was unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. "Individuals in the Third Congressional District whose constitutional rights have been injured by improper racial gerrymandering have suffered significant harm," a two-judge majority of the panel wrote.
Virginia has 11 Congressional districts. In 2012, Republican House candidates won 51 percent of the votes cast in the state — and they ended up winning eight seats, to the Democrats' three. Here's what the partisan results looked like:
All three Democrats won with more than 61 percent of the vote, but most Republicans won with margins in the mid-fifties — a classic sign of gerrymandering, indicating that the Democratic-leaning voters were packed into a small number of districts. But the US Constitution doesn't prohibit partisan gerrymandering, so that won't lead a court to toss out the maps.
Partisanship in the US, though, is often intertwined with race. If you look at all the blue in the southeast of the state, that's just one, heavily-black district — the third, represented by Bobby Scott (D). In fact, it's the only majority-black district in the state — even though about one in five residents are black.
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