Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/18pdf/18-422_9ol1.pdf
Page Number: 32

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

27 

Opinion of the Court 

easier for supporters of Republican candidates to translate 
their  votes  into  seats,”  thereby  “enhanc[ing]  the[ir]  rela-
tive voice.”  Id., at 933 (internal quotation marks omitted).

These  cases  involve  blatant  examples  of  partisanship 
driving  districting  decisions.  But  the  First  Amendment 
analysis  below  offers  no  “clear”  and  “manageable”  way  of 
distinguishing  permissible  from  impermissible  partisan 
motivation.  The  Common  Cause  court  embraced  that 
conclusion,  observing  that  “a 
judicially  manageable
framework for evaluating partisan gerrymandering claims
need  not  distinguish  an  ‘acceptable’  level  of  partisan  ger-
rymandering  from  ‘excessive’  partisan  gerrymandering” 
because  “the  Constitution  does  not  authorize  state  redis-
tricting  bodies  to  engage  in  such  partisan  gerrymander-
ing.”  Id., at 851.  The decisions below prove the prediction 
of the Vieth plurality that “a First Amendment claim, if it
were sustained, would render unlawful all consideration of 
political  affiliation  in  districting,”  541  U. S.,  at  294,  con-
trary to our established precedent. 

C 
The  dissent  proposes  using  a  State’s  own  districting
criteria as a neutral baseline from which to measure how 
extreme  a  partisan  gerrymander  is.  The  dissent  would 
have  us  line  up  all  the  possible  maps  drawn  using  those 
criteria  according  to  the  partisan  distribution  they  would 
produce.  Distance from the “median” map would indicate
whether  a  particular  districting  plan  harms  supporters  of 
one party to an unconstitutional extent.  Post, at 18–19, 25 
(opinion of KAGAN, J.).

As an initial matter, it does not make sense to use crite-
ria that will vary from State to State and year to year as
the  baseline  for  determining  whether  a  gerrymander
violates the Federal Constitution.  The degree of partisan
advantage that the Constitution tolerates should not turn
on  criteria  offered  by  the  gerrymanderers  themselves.    It