Assessing Gerrymandering after the 2020 Census

The Roberts Court has turned over efforts to limit gerrymanders to politics and willing state courts. Scholars have proposed several methods for evaluating possible gerrymanders, and recent legislation that gained some traction in Congress would have enshrined some of these methods into law. We argue that these methods come with trade-offs and their utility is determined by the circumstances in which a map might be used and the values that mapmakers hope to promote or protect when they delineate district boundaries. We illustrate these trade-offs in policy maker and scholarly proposed methods for identifying the distortive effects of district lines by examining congressional maps enacted following the 2020 census. Among the 37 states with three or more congressional districts, we find consistent evidence of partisan gerrymandering in four states, consistent evidence of no partisan gerrymandering in 12 states, and mixed evidence of gerrymandering in the remaining 21. Considering the large number of mixed findings, we conclude with a discussion of the likely next step needed for confronting the pernicious effects of gerrymandering.