Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/18pdf/18-422_9ol1.pdf
Page Number: 48.0

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

9 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

After  all  (as  the  majority  rightly  notes),  racial  and  resi-
dential  gerrymanders  were  also  once  with  us,  but  the 
Court  has  done  something  about  that  fact.  See  ante,  at 
10.1   The  majority’s  idea  instead  seems  to  be  that  if  we
have  lived  with  partisan  gerrymanders  so  long,  we  will 
survive. 

to 

led 

so-called 

That  complacency  has  no  cause.  Yes,  partisan  gerry-
mandering  goes  back  to  the  Republic’s  earliest  days.    (As
does vociferous opposition to it.)  But big data and modern
technology—of just the kind that the mapmakers in North 
Carolina and Maryland used—make today’s gerrymander-
ing altogether different from the crude linedrawing of the 
past.  Old-time efforts, based on little more than guesses,
dummymanders—
sometimes 
gerrymanders  that  went  spectacularly  wrong.   Not  likely
in  today’s  world.  Mapmakers  now  have  access  to  more
granular data about party preference and voting behavior 
than ever before.  County-level voting data has given way 
to precinct-level or city-block-level data; and increasingly,
mapmakers  avail  themselves  of  data  sets  providing  wide-
ranging  information  about  even  individual  voters.  See 
Brief  for  Political  Science  Professors  as  Amici  Curiae  20– 
22.  Just  as  important,  advancements  in  computing  tech-
nology  have  enabled  mapmakers  to  put  that  information 
to  use  with  unprecedented  efficiency  and  precision.  See 
id., at 22–25.  While bygone mapmakers may have drafted
three  or  four  alternative  districting  plans,  today’s  map-
makers  can  generate  thousands  of  possibilities  at  the
touch of a key—and then choose the one giving their party 
maximum  advantage  (usually  while  still  meeting  tradi-

—————— 

1 And  even  putting  that  aside,  any  originalist  argument  would  have 
to  deal  with  an  inconvenient  fact.    The  Framers  originally  viewed 
political parties themselves (let alone their most partisan actions) with 
deep suspicion, as fomenters of factionalism and “symptom[s] of disease
in the body politic.”  G. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early 
Republic, 1789–1815, p. 140 (2009).