the environment Gerrymandering has the ability to create numerous problems for the constituents impacted by the redistricting. A study done by the peer-reviewed Environmental Justice Journal analyzed how gerrymandering contributes to environmental racism. It suggested that partisan gerrymandering can often lead to adverse health complications for minority populations that live closer to United States superfund sites and additionally found that during redistricting periods, minority populations are "effectively gerrymandered out" of districts that tend to have fewer people of color in them and are farther away from toxic waste sites. This redistricting can be seen as a deliberate move to further marginalize minority populations and restrict them from gaining access to congressional representation and potentially fixing environmental hazards in their communities. Gerrymandering and the 2018 midterm elections Gerrymandering was considered by many Democrats to be one of the biggest obstacles they came across during the 2018 U.S. midterm election. In early 2018, both the United States Supreme Court and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court determined that the Republican parties in North Carolina and Pennsylvania had committed unconstitutional gerrymandering in the respective cases Cooper v. Harris and League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In the case of Pennsylvania, the map was reconfigured into an evenly split congressional delegation, which gave Democrats in Pennsylvania more congressional representation and subsequently aided the Democrats in flipping the U.S. House of Representatives. In contrast, North Carolina did not reconfigure the districts prior to the midterm elections, which ultimately gave Republicans there an edge during the election. Republicans in North Carolina acquired 50% of the vote, which subsequently garnered them about 77% of the available seats in congress. Wisconsin was the only state in the 2018 midterms which the party receiving the majority of votes held a minority of congressional seats. Other factors affecting redistricting At a federal level, gerrymandering has been blamed for a decrease in competitive elections, movement toward extreme party positions, and gridlock in Congress. Harry Enten of FiveThirtyEight argues that decreasing competition is partly due to gerrymandering, but even more so due to the population of the United States self-segregating by political ideology, which is seen in by-county voter registrations. Enten points to studies which find that factors other than gerrymandering account for over 75% of the increase in polarization in the past forty years, presumably due largely to changes among voters themselves. Because the Senate (which cannot be gerrymandered