Fifty-one years ago today on a Memphis hotel balcony, the real reason that so-called "partisan gerrymandering" is — to use the technical term — inextricably intertwined with civil rights in general and racial discrimination in particular became excrutiatingly obvious. Trying to pretend that it's just about "partisan advantage" is at best egregious self-deception… because every single proxy that is used to predict/predetermine partisan allegiance is racially (and otherwise civil-rights-violating) disparate.
Claiming that partisan gerrymandering is not "justiciable" because it is a "political question" is fundamentally dishonest for a simple reason: In this nation, partisanship is infected with racial disparity now, and always has been. Just ask Nancy Reagan. It's not that there are no individuals who "don't fit" the profile, in the kind of tokenism that no one can really defend with a straight face. It's that when one looks at those who are not seeking elective office, things become just a little bit… obvious.
Dr King's legacy would be best honored by throwing out all gerrymandering of any kind. The pretense that a "political question" is "nonjusticiable" can be pushed down the road (however intellectually dishonest that pretense is itself); the narrower question of proxies, however, cannot.