The New Mexico Supreme Court this week sided with the state Republican Party in allowing its lawsuit alleging Democrats politically gerrymandered the new congressional map to be heard in district court. While it may look like a victory for the GOP, nonpartisan advocates for fair redistricting said it’s actually a win for all New Mexicans.
The court rejected arguments by Democratic leaders when it determined the equal protection clause of the New Mexico constitution allows the courts to hear partisan gerrymandering cases. However, Co-President of the League of Women Voters of New Mexico Hannah Burling said the decision is only a “temporary win” for the GOP.
“This is not a partisan matter,” she said. “It may sound like that in New Mexico, but this is really a victory for the voters.”
The League runs Fair Districts for New Mexico, a watchdog group that has advocated for New Mexico to take the power of drawing voting districts out of the hands of partisan lawmakers and give it to an independent commission — a resolution legislators have swatted down in both sessions since the maps were most recently redrawn in 2021.
The nonpartisan Common Cause New Mexico said in a statement Friday that while it applauds the court’s decision, “only the Legislature can permanently end the conflict of interest allowing politicians to draw our voting maps,” by putting that constitutional amendment on the ballot.
Burling said partisan gerrymandering by either party hurts the democratic process overall by increasing distrust in it.
“If you know that your vote didn’t matter at all in the long run because you were deliberately diluted by people who believe differently than you do, you are going to frequently emerge as a bitter and cynical person,” she said. “And we are looking at the fruits of that right now in this country.”
An NPR/Ipsos poll last year found 65% of respondents think American democracy has become more at-risk over the last few years, with that number jumping to 80% when looking just at Republicans.
In what Burling called a “cross-partisan twist,” the state Supreme Court in its order advised a lower court to use a test laid out by liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan in assessing the New Mexico GOP’s claims.
The test asks three questions. First, did the lawmakers intentionally try to dilute the votes of their opponents? Second, did they succeed in doing that? And finally, did the lawmakers have any legitimate, nonpartisan reasons for drawing the lines where they did?
The state’s Justices ordered Ninth Judicial District Court Judge Fred Van Soelen to decide the case by October 1.
