Last year, 'Tennant v Jefferson' permitted clarified 'Karcher v Daggett'. Jefferson County, which is in the tip of the eastern panhandle of West Virginia sued because they didn't like being in the same congressional district as Charleston. Since "we don't like being in the same district as Charleston" is not a reason for suing, they claimed that the districts were not compact, and were not as equal in population as possible - because West Virginia was one of the few states that continued to use whole counties. But they were within 1%.
The district court, quoting Bob Dylan's, "the times they are a-changin", ruled that West Virginia could use computers to split apart counties, and even if they didn't they could get improved equality and compactness with a different combination of counties. The district court was quickly stayed by the Supreme Court, which heard the case and issued its ruling overturning the district court.
West Virginia conceded the first prong of the the test. But they used as their justification, that (1) the plan used whole counties; (2) that it only moved one county between districts, maintaining stability in representation; and (3) avoided pairing incumbents. The Supreme Court decided that these were legitimate state goals, and that the legislature's plan better achieved them than any of the alternatives.
The Supreme Court's ruling that the goals of the West Virginia legislature were legitimate, does not mean that they necessarily agreed with them, but were deferring to the judgment of the legislature, as they should.
Do you think things might have turned out differently in the West Virginia case had the federal district court not quoted Dylan (although in retrospect thery were right about the times a-changin', although not in the way they were thinking - the courts becoming less of a "weapon" in redistricting as you say rather than more), and hadn't tried to parse the West Virginia Constitution in their opinion (which they didn't have to do I don't think as there were closer plans that didn't split any counties, including some I recall reading (on the "US Congressional Redistricting: West Virginia" thread) were not
that different from the existing map)? The state could have appealed using your (2), but would the Supremes have been more predisposed to not micromanage a lower appeals court had their opinion not been so eyebrow-raising?
