Last edited Tue Aug 21, 2018, 06:56 AM - Edit history (1)
There were lawsuits to redraw the STATE legislative seats back in 2012 and those were redrawn per court order (although they probably need to be challenged again IMHO).
BUT there were multiple lawsuits running simultaneously in 2017 - both through the federal courts and the state courts for the congressional seats. The federal court route was rejected by district court judges because it was a "state issue". The state court route, which argued that the current districts were in violation of the state Constitution by not being "compact and contiguous", was what finally prevailed. It was also what kept the SCOTUS from interfering when the GOP sued (rejected for review at least twice).
The state Supreme Court demanded that the state legislature immediately present a redrawn map and welcomed other parties to present recommendations for a map - by a deadline. The governor and various 3rd parties submitted a number of versions (based on data models that would comply with the size and compactness as well as demographics requirements per the VRA). The GOP leaders of the state legislature refused to bring it up before the body and only complied at the last minute just before a midnight deadline, where the GOP douchebag leaders submitted their own, never reviewed or approved by the legislature cockamamie map that pretty much preserved their majority. The state Supreme Court rejected all of the submissions and drew the map themselves, which is the one that we now have. The GOP sued through the federal courts whining about state court "overreach" and ALL of their suits were rejected up through the SCOTUS (because "state" issue).
The map went into effect near the end of February 2018 with enough time to be ready for the May 2018 primary. In the case of Conor Lamb, he won the special election in March for an old version of a district to fill out that district's term and won the primary in May for a newly-redrawn different (but adjacent) district for the general election.
Had we not had a (D) governor or majority (D) state Supreme Court, this would have never happened because the GOP spearheaded this insane gerrymandering in 2011 and were determined to keep it that way. Their response to the redrawn map was to threaten to impeach the (D) members of the state Supreme Court. 
For a state that has a (D) majority of registered voters by ~800,000, the state congressional delegation SHOULD BE -
10 (D) and 8 (R)
instead of the current -
13 (R) and 5 (D)
Analysts expect the potential final outcome could be 9 (D) - 9 (R).
But as it stands right now, pre-general election, there is OBVIOUSLY something wrong and the "media" refuses to delve into this state's current state of affairs by ignoring the gerrymandering and assuming that we are some sort of "red" state. Showing large swaths of geography as "red" ignores that many of those large swaths have more moose than people. A bunch of years ago I had posted stuff about our county population where almost 1/2 of the 67 PA counties have less than 100,000 people in the entire county.
Edit to add - there were cartograms on (of all places) National Review as they were analyzing the possibility of Drumpf getting PA , which basically showed the truer skew of D + I from past elections (and population). E.g., 2008 -
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