Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has effectively taken the federal courts out of the political-bias reapportionment business, state courts around the country have stepped into the gap and are aggressively upsetting legislatively approved reapportionment plans that are grossly biased in favor of Democrats, as in Maryland and New York, or in favor of Republicans, as in North Carolina and Wisconsin.

We applaud these judicial decisions and hope they continue. Unfortunately, some of the decisions, thankfully not in New York, are by courts divided along political lines that are easy to spot where the judges run on partisan tickets. In New York, all the judges were appointed by a Democratic governor, and a majority of them struck down the Democratic gerrymander. But the fact remains that judicial majorities elsewhere, however formed, are striking down improper gerrymanders, and that is a very good thing for democracy.