Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/18pdf/18-422_9ol1.pdf
Page Number: 50.0

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

11 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

C 
Partisan gerrymandering of the kind before us not only 
subverts  democracy  (as  if  that  weren’t  bad  enough).    It 
violates  individuals’  constitutional  rights  as  well.  That 
statement is not the lonesome cry of a dissenting Justice.
This Court has recognized extreme partisan gerrymander-
ing as such a violation for many years. 

Partisan  gerrymandering  operates  through  vote  dilu-
tion—the devaluation of one citizen’s vote as compared to
others.  A  mapmaker  draws  district  lines  to  “pack”  and 
“crack”  voters  likely  to support  the disfavored  party.   See 
generally  Gill  v.  Whitford,  585  U. S.  ___,  ___–___  (2018) 
(slip  op.,  at  14–16).  He  packs  supermajorities  of  those 
voters into a relatively few districts, in numbers far greater
than  needed  for  their  preferred  candidates  to  prevail. 
Then  he  cracks  the  rest  across  many  more  districts, 
spreading  them  so  thin  that  their  candidates  will  not  be 
able to win.  Whether the person is packed or cracked, his 
vote  carries  less  weight—has  less  consequence—than  it 
would  under  a  neutrally  drawn  (non-partisan)  map.    See 
id., at ___ (KAGAN, J., concurring) (slip op., at 4).  In short, 
the  mapmaker  has  made  some  votes  count  for  less,  be-
cause they are likely to go for the other party.

That  practice  implicates  the  Fourteenth  Amendment’s
Equal Protection Clause.  The Fourteenth Amendment, we 
long ago recognized, “guarantees the opportunity for equal
participation  by  all  voters  in  the  election”  of  legislators. 
Reynolds  v.  Sims,  377  U. S.  533,  566  (1964).    And  that 
opportunity “can be denied by a debasement or dilution of 
the weight of a citizen’s vote just as effectively as by wholly 
prohibiting  the  free  exercise  of  the  franchise.” 
Id.,  at 
555.  Based on that principle, this Court in its one-person-
one-vote decisions prohibited creating districts with signif-
icantly  different  populations.  A  State  could  not,  we  ex-
plained, thus “dilut[e] the weight of votes because of place 
of  residence.”    Id.,  at  566.  The  constitutional  injury  in  a