Even if the Justice Department did not reject a state’s map, the preclearance requirement at least somewhat constrained partisan excesses, “because everyone knew there was going to be a review,” says Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who specializes in redistricting. He worries that the lawmakers’ incentives have now flipped: Since legislatures no longer need prior approval to proceed, they will feel emboldened to pursue aggressive racial and partisan gerrymanders because even a successful legal challenge against those maps could take years.
Part of that transparency,” said Hawthorne, will be “keeping data on how the rollout of these policies work.”
Source: The Atlantic
