Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/18pdf/18-422_9ol1.pdf
Page Number: 24

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

19 

Opinion of the Court 

when  used  as  the  basis  for  relief.    Instead,  it  seems,  a 
decision  under  these  standards  would  unavoidably  have
significant  political  effect,  whether  intended  or  not.” 
Vieth,  541  U. S.,  at  308–309  (opinion  concurring  in  judg-
ment).  See  id.,  at  298  (plurality  opinion)  (“[P]acking  and 
cracking,  whether  intentional  or  no,  are  quite  consistent 
with  adherence  to  compactness  and  respect  for  political
subdivision lines”).

Deciding  among  just  these  different  visions  of  fairness 
(you can imagine many others) poses basic questions that 
are  political,  not  legal.    There  are  no  legal  standards  dis-
cernible  in  the  Constitution  for  making  such  judgments,
let  alone  limited  and  precise  standards  that  are  clear,
manageable, and politically neutral.  Any judicial decision 
on  what  is  “fair”  in  this  context  would  be  an  “unmoored 
determination”  of  the  sort  characteristic  of  a  political 
question  beyond  the  competence  of  the  federal  courts. 
Zivotofsky v. Clinton, 566 U. S. 189, 196 (2012).

And  it  is  only  after  determining  how  to  define  fairness 
that  you  can  even  begin  to  answer  the  determinative
question:  “How  much  is  too  much?”    At  what  point  does
permissible  partisanship  become  unconstitutional? 
If 
compliance  with  traditional  districting  criteria  is  the 
fairness  touchstone,  for  example,  how  much  deviation
from  those  criteria  is  constitutionally  acceptable  and  how 
should mapdrawers prioritize competing criteria?  Should 
a  court  “reverse  gerrymander”  other  parts  of  a  State  to 
counteract “natural” gerrymandering caused, for example,
by  the  urban  concentration  of  one  party?    If  a  districting
plan protected half of the incumbents but redistricted the 
rest into head to head races, would that be constitutional? 
A  court  would  have  to  rank  the  relative  importance  of 
those  traditional  criteria  and  weigh  how  much  deviation
from each to allow. 

If  a  court  instead  focused  on  the  respective  number  of
seats  in  the  legislature,  it  would  have  to  decide  the  ideal