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Page Number: 69

30 

RUCHO v. COMMON CAUSE 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

And might be reintroduced until the end of time.  Because 
what  all  these  bills  have  in  common  is  that  they  are  not 
laws.  The  politicians  who  benefit  from  partisan  gerry-
mandering  are  unlikely  to  change  partisan  gerrymander-
ing.  And because those politicians maintain themselves in 
office  through  partisan  gerrymandering,  the  chances  for 
legislative reform are slight. 

No worries, the majority says; it has another idea.  The 
majority  notes  that  voters  themselves  have  recently  ap-
proved  ballot  initiatives  to  put  power  over  districting  in 
the  hands  of  independent  commissions  or  other  non-
partisan  actors.    See  ante,  at  32.  Some  Members  of  the 
majority, of course, once thought such initiatives unconsti-
tutional.  See  Arizona  State  Legislature,  576  U. S.,  at  ___ 
(ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting)  (slip  op.,  at  1).    But  put  that 
aside.  Fewer  than  half  the  States  offer  voters  an  oppor-
tunity  to  put  initiatives  to  direct  vote;  in  all  the  rest  (in-
cluding North Carolina and Maryland), voters are depend-
ent on legislators to make electoral changes (which for all
the  reasons  already  given,  they  are  unlikely  to  do).    And 
even when voters have a mechanism they can work them-
selves,  legislators  often  fight  their  efforts  tooth  and  nail. 
Look  at  Missouri.    There,  the  majority  touts  a  voter-
approved  proposal  to  turn  districting  over  to  a  state  de-
mographer.  See ante, at 32.  But before the demographer 
had drawn a single line, Members of the state legislature
had introduced a bill to start undoing the change.  See Mo. 
H. J. Res. 48, 100th Gen. Assembly, 1st Reg. Sess. (2019).
I’d  put  better  odds  on  that  bill’s  passage  than  on  all  the
congressional proposals the majority cites.

The  majority’s  most  perplexing  “solution”  is  to  look  to 
state courts.  Ante, at 30.  “[O]ur conclusion,” the majority
states,  does  not  “condemn  complaints  about  districting  to
echo  into  a  void”:  Just  a  few  years  back,  “the  Supreme
Court  of  Florida  struck  down  that  State’s  congressional 
districting  plan  as  a  violation”  of  the  State  Constitution.