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Page Number: 17.0

12 

RUCHO v. COMMON CAUSE 

Opinion of the Court 

the  Court  extended  its  ruling  to  malapportionment  of
congressional districts, holding that Article I, §2, required 
that  “one  man’s  vote  in  a  congressional  election  is  to  be 
worth as much as another’s.”  376 U. S., at 8. 

Another  line  of  challenges  to  districting  plans  has  fo-
cused  on  race.  Laws  that  explicitly  discriminate  on  the 
basis  of  race,  as  well  as  those  that  are  race  neutral  on 
their  face  but  are  unexplainable  on  grounds  other  than
race,  are  of  course  presumptively  invalid.  The  Court 
applied  those  principles  to  electoral  boundaries  in  Gomil-
lion  v.  Lightfoot,  concluding  that  a  challenge  to  an  “un-
couth  twenty-eight  sided”  municipal  boundary  line  that 
excluded black voters from city elections stated a constitu-
tional  claim.  364  U. S.  339,  340  (1960).    In  Wright  v. 
Rockefeller,  376  U. S.  52  (1964),  the  Court  extended  the 
reasoning  of  Gomillion  to  congressional  districting.    See 
Shaw I, 509 U. S., at 645. 

Partisan  gerrymandering  claims  have  proved  far  more
difficult to adjudicate.  The basic reason is that, while it is 
illegal  for  a  jurisdiction  to  depart  from  the  one-person, 
one-vote  rule,  or  to  engage  in  racial  discrimination  in 
districting,  “a  jurisdiction  may  engage  in  constitutional 
political  gerrymandering.”    Hunt  v.  Cromartie,  526  U. S. 
541,  551  (1999)  (citing  Bush  v.  Vera,  517  U. S.  952,  968 
(1996); Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U. S. 899, 905 (1996) (Shaw II ); 
Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 916 (1995); Shaw I, 509 
U. S.,  at  646).    See  also  Gaffney  v.  Cummings,  412  U. S. 
735,  753  (1973)  (recognizing  that  “[p]olitics  and  political 
from  districting  and 
considerations  are 
apportionment”).

inseparable 

To  hold  that  legislators  cannot  take  partisan  interests
into account when drawing district lines would essentially 
countermand  the  Framers’  decision  to  entrust  districting
to  political  entities.  The  “central  problem”  is  not  deter-
mining  whether  a  jurisdiction  has  engaged  in  partisan
gerrymandering.  It  is  “determining  when  political  gerry-