The Kentucky Supreme Court has held that partisan gerrymandering claims are justiciable under the state constitution, observing that “partisanship may of course rise to an unconstitutional level.” Graham v. Sec’y of State Michael Adams, No. 2022-SC-0522-TG, — S.W.3d —-, 2023 WL 8640825, at *10 (Ky. Dec. 14, 2023). To determine whether a map contains an illegal partisan gerrymander, the court “asks not whether the partisanship constitutes some slight or technical deviation from constitutional limitations, but rather whether it either involves a clear, flagrant, and unwarranted invasion of the constitutional rights of the people, or is so severe as to threaten our Commonwealth’s democratic form of government.” Id. (citation omitted). The court has acknowledged that this amounts to a “substantially deferential standard.” Id. Applying that standard, the court ruled that neither the challenged state house map nor congressional map for the 2020 redistricting cycle rose to the level of an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. Id. According to the court, the house map did not deviate substantially from one offered by the plaintiffs, while the congressional map followed naturally from Kentucky’s political geography. Id. at *10–11.
No constitutional or statutory provision expressly addresses the process for remedying an illegal partisan gerrymander, and the Kentucky Supreme Court has not had an opportunity to consider a remedy for such a gerrymander since it has yet to find one.