Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/18pdf/18-422_9ol1.pdf
Page Number: 56

Cite as:  588 U. S. ____ (2019) 

17 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

purpose  of  entrenching  their  own  party  in  power?    Here, 
the  two  District  Courts  catalogued  the  overwhelming
direct  evidence  that  they  did.    To  remind  you  of  some
highlights, see supra, at 4–6:  North Carolina’s redistrict-
ing  committee  used  “Partisan  Advantage”  as  an  official 
criterion  for  drawing  district  lines.    And  from  the  first  to 
the last, that committee’s chair (along with his mapmaker)
acted  to  ensure  a  10–3  partisan  split,  whatever  the 
statewide vote, because he thought that “electing Republi-
cans  is  better  than  electing  Democrats.”    For  their  part, 
Maryland’s  Democrats—the  Governor,  senior  Congress-
man,  and  State  Senate  President  alike—openly  admitted 
to  a  single  driving  purpose:  flip  the  Sixth  District  from 
Republican  to  Democratic.  They  did  not  blanch  from 
moving some 700,000 voters into new districts (when one-
person-one-vote  rules  required  relocating  just  10,000)  for 
that reason and that reason alone. 

The  majority’s  response  to  the  District  Courts’  purpose 
analysis is discomfiting.  The majority does not contest the
lower courts’ findings; how could it?  Instead, the majority
says  that  state  officials’  intent  to  entrench  their  party  in
power  is  perfectly  “permissible,”  even  when  it  is  the  pre-
dominant factor in drawing district lines.  Ante, at 23.  But 
that is wrong.  True enough, that the intent to inject “po-
litical  considerations”  into  districting  may  not  raise  any 
constitutional  concerns. 
In  Gaffney  v.  Cummings,  412 
U. S.  735  (1973),  for  example,  we  thought  it  non-
problematic  when  state  officials  used  political  data  to
ensure rough proportional representation between the two
parties.  And true enough that even the naked purpose to
gain partisan advantage may not rise to the level of consti-
tutional notice when it is not the driving force in mapmak-
ing  or  when  the  intended  gain  is  slight.    See  Vieth,  541 
U. S., at 286 (plurality opinion).  But when political actors
have a specific and predominant intent to entrench them-
selves  in  power  by  manipulating  district  lines,  that  goes