Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/18pdf/18-422_9ol1.pdf
Page Number: 22.0

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

17 

Opinion of the Court 

43–51 (2013).  That meant that a party could garner nearly
half  of  the vote  statewide  and  wind  up  without  any  seats
in  the  congressional  delegation.    The  Whigs  in  Alabama
suffered  that  fate  in  1840:  “their  party  garnered  43  per-
cent  of  the  statewide  vote,  yet  did  not  receive  a  single 
seat.”  Id., at 48.  When Congress required single-member 
districts  in  the  Apportionment  Act  of  1842,  it  was  not 
out  of  a  general  sense  of  fairness,  but  instead  a 
(mis)calculation  by  the  Whigs  that  such  a  change  would 
improve their electoral prospects.  Id., at 43–44. 

Unable  to  claim  that  the  Constitution  requires  propor-
tional representation outright, plaintiffs inevitably ask the 
courts  to  make  their  own  political  judgment  about  how 
much  representation  particular  political  parties  deserve— 
based  on  the  votes  of  their  supporters—and  to  rearrange 
the  challenged  districts  to  achieve  that  end.    But  federal 
courts  are  not  equipped  to  apportion  political  power  as  a 
matter  of  fairness,  nor  is  there  any  basis  for  concluding 
that they were authorized to do so.  As Justice Scalia put 
it for the plurality in Vieth: 

“ ‘Fairness’  does  not  seem  to  us  a  judicially  manage- 
able standard. . . . Some criterion more solid and more 
demonstrably met than that seems to us necessary to 
enable  the  state  legislatures  to  discern  the  limits  of
their  districting  discretion,  to  meaningfully  constrain
the  discretion  of  the  courts,  and  to  win  public  ac-
ceptance for the courts’ intrusion into a process that is
the  very  foundation  of  democratic  decisionmaking.”
541 U. S., at 291. 

The initial difficulty in settling on a “clear, manageable 
and  politically  neutral”  test  for  fairness  is  that  it  is  not 
even clear what fairness looks like in this context.  There 
is  a  large  measure  of  “unfairness”  in  any  winner-take-all 
system.  Fairness may mean a greater number of competi-
tive  districts.    Such  a  claim  seeks  to  undo  packing  and