Democrats are fired up about winning more state legislatures next year after the Supreme Court's split ruling Thursday that barred federal courts from interfering in partisan state gerrymandering issues.
"The stakes are so much higher in the election of state legislatures because after 2020, [Republicans] can redraw the lines without any real constitutional strictures or guardrails," Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told The Washington Post.
"The future of both congressional districts and state legislative lines will be decided for years to come," he added. "It's hard to exaggerate how this is a cross-roads election."
But former Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, finance chairman of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, told the Post that the GOP would "battle to protect our country from Barack Obama and Eric Holder's plan to hijack our elections.
"Democrats will double down on flipping state Supreme Courts and bring more lawsuits to be heard by friendly judges they helped to elect, just like they have already done in Pennsylvania and North Carolina and tried to do in Wisconsin," he said.
The Supreme Court's conservative majority, including two justices appointed by President Donald Trump, prevailed in a 5-4 decision that dealt a significant blow in battling the redrawing of state congressional and legislative districts to benefit a particular party.
The ruling does not affect racial gerrymandering challenges, however. Courts have barred such redistricting, which seeks to reduce the political representation of racial minorities, for a half-century.
But Democrats were charged by the court's decision.
Holder, the former Obama attorney general who now heads the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, told the Post that party leaders were active on various fronts and slammed the conservative court as "a partisan majority that has done lasting damage."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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