“We’ll see how the courts react to this claim, but some of the districts that are drawn are clearly not going to be in anyone’s definition of continguous and compact,” says Stephen Farnsworth, a political-science professor at the University of Mary Washington.
Farnsworth says bringing the lawsuit at the state rather than federal level is a more effective way to raise the issue. That’s because the U.S. Constitution does not have a compactness standard.
