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Page Number: 16.0

12 

GILL v. WHITFORD 

Opinion of the Court 

rymandering  claims.    Relevant  to  this  case,  an  amicus 
brief in support of the LULAC plaintiffs proposed a “sym­
metry standard” to “measure partisan bias” by comparing
how the two major political parties “would fare hypotheti­
cally  if  they  each  . . .  received  a  given  percentage  of  the
vote.”  548 U. S., at 419 (opinion of KENNEDY, J.).  JUSTICE 
KENNEDY  noted  some  wariness  at  the  prospect  of  “adopt­
ing a constitutional standard that invalidates a map based
on unfair results that would occur in a hypothetical state
of affairs.”  Id., at 420.  Aside from that problem, he wrote,
the  partisan  bias  standard  shed  no  light  on  “how  much 
partisan  dominance  is  too  much.” 
 JUSTICE 
KENNEDY  therefore  concluded  that  “asymmetry  alone  is 
not  a  reliable  measure  of  unconstitutional  partisanship.” 
Ibid. 

Ibid.

Justice  Stevens  would  have  found  that  the  Texas  map 

was  a  partisan  gerrymander  based  in  part  on  the  asym­
metric  advantage  it  conferred  on  Republicans  in  convert­
ing  votes  to  seats. 
Id.,  at  466–467,  471–473  (opinion
concurring in part and dissenting in part).  Justice Souter, 
writing for himself and JUSTICE GINSBURG, noted that he 
would not “rule out the utility of a criterion of symmetry,” 
and that “further attention could be devoted to the admin­
istrability  of  such  a  criterion  at  all  levels  of  redistricting 
and  its  review.”  Id.,  at  483–484  (opinion  concurring  in
part and dissenting in part). 

B 
At  argument  on  appeal  in  this  case,  counsel  for  the
plaintiffs argued that this Court can address the problem 
of  partisan  gerrymandering  because  it  must:  The  Court 
should  exercise  its  power  here  because  it  is  the  “only
institution in the United States” capable of “solv[ing] this
problem.”  Tr.  of  Oral  Arg.  62.    Such  invitations  must  be 
answered  with  care.    “Failure  of  political  will  does  not 
justify unconstitutional remedies.”  Clinton v. City of New