It doesn’t seem as if the SCOTUS decision is all that radical. It would seem that the Court has again upheld the general notion of partisan gerrymandering. Further, the notion that boundaries can be redrawn whenever states choose to do so is, which is new.

The issue is about minority voting populations, and with the Voting Rights Act (Via CNN): High court upholds most of Texas redistricting map

At issue was the shifting of 100,000 Hispanics out of a district represented by a Republican incumbent and into a new, oddly shaped district. Justices had been told that was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voting rights.

As such, the scope of this appears to be narrow and sounds to be to basically uphold previous rulings.

The question that remains open, as the news trickles out, is whether the districts have to be fixed prior to the November elections (the answer is probably “yes”) and then how many districts are affected (one cannot redraw just one district).