Facing no time pressures, the state Supreme Court has ample opportunity to ensure that Pennsylvania’s legislative districts for the years leading up to the 2022 elections are drawn fairly, not gerrymandered.

And, the high court should have no qualms about sending back to the Legislative Reapportionment Commission a redrawn map prepared after Republicans’ initial map was struck down in January — if the latest map also has serious flaws.

By having control of the Legislature, Republicans’ interests will prevail in redistricting, just like Democrats’ interests would if they were in control. Still, districts should not be so unfairly drawn that they make a mockery of the principle of two-party government.

To those unfamiliar with the term “gerrymander,” it is the process of dividing voting areas unfairly to give one political party an election edge that reasonably drawn districts would not provide. For example, one Philadelphia-area gerrymandered district resulting from the reapportionment that took effect with the 2002 elections has a contorted shape to benefit the Republican Party.

The GOP’s goal of more gerrymandering this year backfired with the high court’s rejection of the initial redistricting plan.

Because the GOP waited so long to approve the initial plan, assuming it would withstand a court challenge in the Republican-dominated high court, Republicans ran out of time to have a new redistricting plan in place for this year’s elections.

Now, rather than new districts being in place for this year, new maps will take effect for the 2014 legislative balloting.

Those new districts will function for only eight years, rather than 10.

A new redistricting process will be implemented based on the 2020 census. Statistics from that census will be the basis for how state Senate and House districts will look after the 2022 elections.

The state’s highest court should give tough scrutiny to the latest set of redrawn maps.

In rejecting the initial maps, the court criticized what it said were unnecessary splits of municipalities, and districts that were unnecessarily drawn into unusual and tortured shapes.

In a new court challenge, the state’s 20-member Senate Democratic minority caucus contends Republicans, with the new maps, have not adequately justified splitting counties or shifting new territory into different districts.

In general, Senate Democrats are arguing that Republicans have not followed the requirements of the court’s earlier ruling.

Whether the Supreme Court hands down its new ruling a week from now or two months or more from now, it isn’t going to affect 2012 balloting. Therefore, the court shouldn’t rush to a ruling that would not only risk tarnishing its image, but further damage the General Assembly’s already unflattering image.

By way of its final redistricting decision, the message from the Supreme Court must be to do the job right the first time and that anything less will not be tolerated.

That’s the message that should have been learned from the January ruling — but might not have been.