The purpose of the laws should be to ensure fairness. Fairness is not defined by the law. Unless you consider it was fair for women not to be able to vote, when that was the law.

There have been many attempts to fix districting laws, but of course those changes have to be approved by representatives elected under the previous laws.

It has been difficult to challenge these in court because it’s hard to argue whether a districting is “fair”. There has been a little progress on challenging some districting based on a statistical argument that shows the one-party advantage resulting from the particular districting is extremely unlikely to be the result of chance.