Supporters of the movement to stop extreme gerrymandering celebrated a major victory on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court approved the practice of having independent commissions take redistricting power away from state legislatures.

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that a bipartisan Arizona panel that draws the state's districts is constitutional. That means that the independent redistricting commission can continue to draw the boundaries for congressional and legislative districts.

"The people of Arizona turned to the initiative to curb the practice of gerrymandering, and, thereby, to ensure that members of Congress would have 'an habitual recollection of their dependence on the people,'" wrote Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the majority opinion, citing a quote from The Federalist Papers, according to NPR.

Chief Justice John Roberts joined conservative Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito in a dissenting opinion.

Arizona's Independent Redistricting Commission was formed in 2000 in response to complaints that state legislatures were engaging in partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts. That same year, Arizona voters approved an independent commission consisting of two Republicans, two Democrats and a chairman who may not be a member of either party to draw district lines in a ballot initiative.

However, following the 2012 election, Republican legislators sued the state commission because they were not included in the district-drawing process.

The court's majority opinion wrote that overturning the independent commission would go against the spirit of the elections clause.

"The Elections Clause permits the people of Arizona to provide for redistricting by independent commission," the decision read. "The history and purpose of the Clause weigh heavily against precluding the people of Arizona from creating a commission operating independently of the state legislature to establish congressional districts. Such preclusion would also run up against the Constitution's animating principle that the people themselves are the originating source of all the powers of government."

The decision continued, "The Framers may not have imagined the modern initiative process in which the people's legislative power is coextensive with the state legislature's authority, but the invention of the initiative was in full harmony with the Constitution's conception of the people as the font of governmental power. It would thus be perverse to interpret 'Legislature' in the Elections Clause to exclude lawmaking by the people, particularly when such lawmaking is intended to advance the prospect that Members of Congress will in fact be 'chosen... by the People of the several States.'"

On the other hand, the conservative wing stated in the dissenting decision that the court's majority was ignoring evidence and "relying instead on disconnected observations about direct democracy, a contorted interpretation of an irrelevant statute, and naked appeals to public policy."

"Nowhere does the majority explain how a constitutional provision that vests redistricting authority in 'the Legislature' permits a State to wholly exclude 'the Legislature' from redistricting," reads the minority decision. "Arizona's Commission might be a noble endeavor -- although it does not seem so 'independent' in practice- but the 'fact that a given law or procedure is efficient, convenient, and useful... will not save it if it is contrary to the Constitution.' No matter how concerned we may be about partisanship in redistricting, this Court has no power to gerrymander the Constitution."