Court Opinion

ID: 9434586
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:52:31.7781+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:52.627810
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens
concurs in the judgment that we should not address plaintiffs’ statewide political gerrymandering challenges. Though he reaches that result via standing analysis, post, at 327,328 (dissenting opinion), while we reach it through political-question analysis, our conclusions are the same: these statewide claims are nonjusticiable.
Justice Stevens would, however, require courts to consider political gerrymandering challenges at the individual-district level. Much of his dissent is addressed to the incompatibility of severe partisan gerrymanders with democratic principles. We do not disagree with that judgment, any more than we disagree with the judgment that it would be unconstitutional for the Senate to employ, in impeachment proceedings, procedures that are incompatible with its obligation to “try” impeachments. See Nixon v. United States, 506 U. S. 224 (1993). The issue we have discussed is not whether severe partisan gerrymanders violate the Constitution, but whether it is for the courts to say when a violation has occurred, and to design a remedy. On that point, Justice Stevens’s dissent is less helpful, saying, essentially, that if we can do it in the racial gerrymandering context we can do it here.
We have examined, supra, at 285-288, the many reasons why that is not so. Only a few of them are challenged by Justice Stevens. He says that we “mistakenly assum[e] that race cannot provide a legitimate basis for making politi*293cal judgments.” Post, at 338. But we do not say that race-conscious decisionmaking is always unlawful. Race can be used, for example, as an indicator to achieve the purpose of neighborhood cohesiveness in districting. What we have said is impermissible is “the purpose of segregating voters on the basis of race,” supra, at 286 — that is to say, racial gerrymandering for race’s sake, which would be the equivalent of political gerrymandering for politics’ sake. Justice Stevens says we “er[r] in assuming that politics is ‘an ordinary and lawful motive’ ” in districting, post, at 324 — but all he brings forward to contest that is the argument that an excessive injection of politics is unlawful. So it is, and so does our opinion assume. That does not alter the reality that setting out to segregate voters by race is unlawful and hence rare, and setting out to segregate them by political affiliation is (so long as one doesn’t go too far) lawful and hence ordinary.
Justice Stevens’s confidence that what courts have done with racial gerrymandering can be done with political gerrymandering rests in part upon his belief that “the same standards should apply,” post, at 335. But in fact the standards are quite different. A purpose to discriminate on the basis of race receives the strictest scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause, while a similar purpose to discriminate on the basis of politics does not. “[N]othing in our case law compels the conclusion that racial and political gerrymanders are subject to precisely the same constitutional scrutiny. In fact, our country’s long and persistent history of racial discrimination in voting — as well as our Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence, which always has reserved the strictest scrutiny for discrimination on the basis of race — would seem to compel the opposite conclusion.” Shaw, 509 U. S., at 650 (citation omitted). That quoted passage was in direct response to (and rejection of) the suggestion made by Justices White and Stevens in dissent that “a racial gerrymander of the sort alleged here is functionally equivalent to *294gerrymanders for nonracial purposes, such as political gerrymanders.” Ibid. See also Bush v. Vera, 517 U. S. 952, 964 (1996) (plurality opinion) (“We have not subjected political gerrymandering to strict scrutiny”).
Justice Stevens relies on First Amendment cases to suggest that politically discriminatory gerrymanders are subject to strict scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause. See post, at 324-325. It is elementary that scrutiny levels are claim specific. An action that triggers a heightened level of scrutiny for one claim may receive a very different level of scrutiny for a different claim because the underlying rights, and consequently constitutional harms, are not comparable. To say that suppression of political speech (a claimed First Amendment violation) triggers strict scrutiny is not to say that failure to give political groups equal representation (a claimed equal protection violation) triggers strict scrutiny. Only an equal protection claim is before us in the present case — perhaps for the very good reason that a First Amendment claim, if it were sustained, would render unlawful all consideration of political affiliation in districting, just as it renders unlawful all consideration of political affiliation in hiring for non-policy-level government jobs. What cases such as Elrod v. Burns, 427 U. S. 347 (1976), require is not merely that Republicans be given a decent share of the jobs in a Democratic administration, bút that political affiliation be disregarded.
Having failed to make the case for strict scrutiny of political gerrymandering, Justice Stevens falls back on the argument that scrutiny levels simply do not matter for purposes of justiciability. He asserts that a standard imposing a strong presumption of invalidity (strict scrutiny) is no more discernible and manageable than a standard requiring an evenhanded balancing of all considerations with no thumb on the scales (ordinary scrutiny). To state this is to refute it. As is well known, strict scrutiny readily, and almost always, results in invalidation. Moreover, the mere fact that there *295exist standards which this Court could apply — the proposition which much of Justice Stevens’s opinion is devoted to establishing, see, e. g., post, at 321-327, 340-341 — does not mean that those standards are discernible in the Constitution. This Court may not willy-nilly apply standards — even manageable standards — having no relation to constitutional harms. Justice Stevens points out, see post, at 327, n. 15, that Bandemer said differences between racial and political groups “may be relevant to the manner in which the case is adjudicated, but these differences do not justify a refusal to entertain such a case.” 478 U. S., at 125. As 18 years have shown, Bandemer was wrong.
B
Justice Souter, like Justice Stevens, would restrict these plaintiffs, on the allegations before us, to district-specific political gerrymandering claims. Post, at 346, 353 (dissenting opinion). Unlike Justice Stevens, however, Justice Souter recognizes that there is no existing workable standard for adjudicating such claims. He proposes a “fresh start,” post, at 345: a newly constructed standard loosely based in form on our Title VII cases, see McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U. S. 792 (1973), and complete with a five-step prima facie test sewn together from parts of, among other things, our Voting Rights Act jurisprudence, law review articles, and apportionment cases. Even if these self-styled “clues” to unconstitutionality could be manage-ably applied, which we doubt, there is no reason to think they would detect the constitutional crime which Justice Souter is investigating — an “extremity of unfairness” in partisan competition. Post, at 344.
Under Justice Souter’s proposed standard, in order to challenge a particular district, a plaintiff must show (1) that he is a member of a “cohesive political group”; (2) “that the district of his residence . . . paid little or no heed” to traditional districting principles; (3) that there were “specific cor*296relations between the district’s deviations from traditional districting principles and the distribution of the population of his group”; (4) that a hypothetical district exists which includes the plaintiff’s residence, remedies the packing or cracking of the plaintiff’s group, and deviates less from traditional districting principles; and (5) that “the defendants acted intentionally to manipulate the shape of the district in order to pack or crack his group.” Post, at 347-350. When those showings have been made, the burden would shift to the defendants to justify the district “by reference to objectives other than naked partisan advantage.” Post, at 351.
While this five-part test seems eminently scientific, upon analysis one finds that each of the last four steps requires a quantifying judgment that is unguided and ill suited to the development of judicial standards: How much disregard of traditional districting principles? How many correlations between deviations and distribution? How much remedying of packing or cracking by the hypothetical district? How many legislators must have had the intent to pack and crack — and how efficacious must that intent have been (must it have been, for example, a sine qua non cause of the dis-tricting, or a predominant cause)? At step two, for example, Justice Souter would require lower courts to assess whether mapmakers paid “little or no heed to ... traditional districting principles.” Post, at 348. What is a lower court to do when, as will often be the case, the district adheres to some traditional criteria but not others? Justice Souter’s only response to this question is to evade it: “It is not necessary now to say exactly how a district court would balance a good showing on one of these indices against a poor showing on another, for that sort of detail is best worked out case by case.” Post, at 348-349. But the devil lurks precisely in such detail. The central problem is determining when political gerrymandering has gone too far. It does not solve .that problem to break down the original unanswerable ques*297tion (How much political motivation and effect is too much?) into four more discrete but equally unanswerable questions.
Justice Souter’s proposal is doomed to failure for a more basic reason: No test — yea, not even a five-part test — can possibly be successful unless one knows what he is testing for. In the present context, the test ought to identify deprivation of that minimal degree of representation or influence to which a political group is constitutionally entitled. As we have seen, the Bandemer test sought (unhelpfully, but at least gamely) to specify what that minimal degree was: “[a] chance to effectively influence the political process.” 478 U. S., at 133. So did the appellants’ proposed test: “[the] ability to translate a majority of votes into a majority of seats.” Brief for Appellants 20. Justice Souter avoids the difficulties of those formulations by never telling us what his test is looking for, other than the utterly unhelpful “extremity of unfairness.” He vaguely describes the harm he is concerned with as vote dilution, post, at 351, a term which usually implies some actual effect on the weight of a vote. But no element of his test looks to the effect of the gerrymander on the electoral success, the electoral opportunity, or even the political influence, of the plaintiff’s group. We do not know the precise constitutional deprivation his test is designed to identify and prevent.
Even if (though it is implausible) Justice Souter believes that the constitutional deprivation consists of merely “vote dilution,” his test would not even identify that effect. Despite his claimed reliance on the McDonnell Douglas framework, Justice Souter would allow the plaintiff no opportunity to show that the mapmakers’ compliance with traditional districting factors is pretextual.10 His reason for *298this is never stated, but it certainly cannot be that adherence to traditional districting factors negates any possibility of intentional vote dilution. As we have explained above, packing and cracking, whether intentional or no, are quite consistent with adherence to compactness and respect for political subdivision lines. See supra, at 289-290. An even better example is the traditional criterion of incumbency protection. Justice Souter has previously acknowledged it to be a traditional and constitutionally acceptable district-ing principle. See Vera, 517 U. S., at 1047-1048 (dissenting opinion). Since that is so, his test would not protect those who are packed, and often tightly so, to ensure the reelection of representatives of either party. Indeed, efforts to maximize partisan representation statewide might well begin with packing voters of the opposing party into the districts of existing incumbents of that party. By this means an incumbent is protected, a potential adversary to the districting mollified, and votes of the opposing party are diluted.
Like us, Justice Souter acknowledges and accepts that “some intent to gain political advantage is inescapable whenever political bodies devise a district plan, and some effect results from the intent.” Post, at 344. Thus, again like us, he recognizes that “the issue is one of how much is too much.” Ibid. And once those premises are conceded, the only line that can be drawn must be based, as Justice Sou-ter again candidly admits, upon a substantive “notio[n] of fairness.” Ibid. This is the same flabby goal that deprived Justice Powell’s test of all determinacy. To be sure, Justice Souter frames it somewhat differently: Courts must intervene, he says, when “partisan competition has reached an extremity of unfairness.” Ibid, (emphasis added). We do not think the problem is solved by adding the modifier.
*299c
We agree with much of Justice Breyer’s dissenting opinion, which convincingly demonstrates that “political considerations will likely play an important, and proper, role in the drawing of district boundaries.” Post, at 358. This places Justice Breyer, like the other dissenters, in the difficult position of drawing the line between good politics and bad politics. Unlike them, he would tackle this problem at the statewide level.
The criterion Justice Breyer proposes is nothing more precise than “the unjustified use of political factors to entrench a minority in power.” Post, at 360 (emphasis in original). While he invokes in passing the Equal Protection Clause, it should be clear to any reader that what constitutes unjustified entrenchment depends on his own theory of “effective government.” Post, at 356. While one must agree with Justice Breyer’s incredibly abstract starting point that our Constitution sought to create a “basically democratic” form of government, ibid., that is a long and impassable distance away from the conclusion that the Judiciary may assess whether a group (somehow defined) has achieved a level of political power (somehow defined) commensurate with that to which they would be entitled absent unjustified political machinations (whatever that means).
Justice Breyer provides no real guidance for the journey. Despite his promise to do so, ibid., he never tells us what he is testing for, beyond the unhelpful “unjustified entrenchment.” Post, at 360. Instead, he “set[s] forth several sets of circumstances that lay out the indicia of abuse,” “along a continuum,” post, at 365, proceeding (presumably) from the most clearly unconstitutional to the possibly unconstitutional. With regard to the first “scenario,” he is willing to assert that the indicia “would be sufficient to support a claim.” Post, at 366. This seems refreshingly categorical, until one realizes that the indicia consist not merely of the failure of the party receiving the majority of votes to acquire *300a majority of seats in two successive elections, but also of the fact that there is no “neutral” explanation for this phenomenon. Ibid. But of course there always is a neutral explanation — if only the time-honored criterion of incumbent protection. The indicia set forth in Justice Breyer’s second scenario “could also add up to unconstitutional gerrymandering,” ibid, (emphasis added); and for those in the third “a court may conclude that the map crosses the constitutional line,” post, at 367 (emphasis added). We find none of this helpful. Each scenario suffers from at least one of the problems we have previously identified, most notably the difficulties of assessing partisan strength statewide and of ascertaining whether an entire statewide plan is motivated by political or neutral justifications, see supra, at 285-286, 289-290. And even at that, the last two scenarios do not even purport to provide an answer, presumably leaving it to each district court to determine whether, under those circumstances, “unjustified entrenchment” has occurred. In sum, we neither know precisely what Justice Breyer is testing for, nor precisely what fails the test.
But perhaps the most surprising omission from Justice Breyer’s dissent, given his views on other matters, is the absence of any cost-benefit analysis. Justice Breyer acknowledges that “a majority normally can work its political will,” post, at 362, and well describes the number of actors, from statewide executive officers, to redistricting commissions, to Congress, to the People in ballot initiatives and ref-erenda, that stand ready to make that happen. See post, at 362-363. He gives no instance (and we know none) of permanent frustration of majority will. But where the majority has failed to assert itself for some indeterminate period (two successive elections, if we are to believe his first scenario), Justice Breyer simply assumes that “court action may prove necessary,” post, at 364. Why so? In the real world, of course, court action that is available tends to be sought, not just where it is necessary, but where it is in the interest of the seeking party. And the vaguer the test *301for availability, the more frequently interest rather than necessity will produce litigation. Is the regular insertion of the judiciary into districting, with the delay and uncertainty that brings to the political process and the partisan enmity it brings upon the courts, worth the benefit to be achieved— an accelerated (by some unknown degree) effectuation of the majority will? We think not.
V
Justice Kennedy recognizes that we have “demonstrated] the shortcomings of the other standards that have been considered to date,” post, at 308 (opinion concurring in judgment). He acknowledges, moreover, that we “lack . . . comprehensive and neutral principles for drawing electoral boundaries,” post, at 306-307; and that there is an “absence of rules to limit and confine judicial intervention,” post, at 307. From these premises, one might think that Justice Kennedy would reach the conclusion that political gerrymandering claims are nonjusticiable. Instead, however, he concludes that courts should continue to adjudicate such claims because a standard may one day be discovered.
• The first thing to be said about Justice Kennedy’s disposition is that it is not legally available. The District Court in this case considered the plaintiffs’ claims justiciable but dismissed them because the standard for unconstitutionality had not been met. It is logically impossible to affirm that dismissal without either (1) finding that the unconstitutional-districting standard applied by the District Court, or some other standard that it should have applied, has not been met, or (2) finding (as we have) that the claim is nonjusticiable. Justice Kennedy seeks to affirm “[b]e-cause, in the case before us, we have no standard.” Post, at 313. But it is our job, not the plaintiffs’, to explicate the standard that makes the facts alleged by the plaintiffs adequate or inadequate to state a claim. We cannot nonsuit them for our failure to do so.
*302Justice Kennedy asserts that to declare nonjusticiability would be incautious. Post, at 311. Our rush to such a holding after a mere 18 years of fruitless litigation “contrasts starkly” he says, “with the more patient approach” that this Court has taken in the past. Post, at 310. We think not. When it has come to determining what areas fall beyond our Article III authority to adjudicate, this Court’s practice, from the earliest days of the Republic to the present, has been more reminiscent of Hannibal than of Hamlet. On July 18, 1793, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson wrote the Justices at the direction of President Washington, asking whether they might answer “questions [that] depend for their solution on the construction of our treaties, on the laws of nature and nations, and on the laws of the land,” but that arise “under circumstances which do not give a cognisance of them to the tribunals of the country” 3 Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay 486-487 (H. Johnston ed. 1891) (emphasis in original). The letter specifically invited the Justices to give less than a categorical yes-or-no answer, offering to present the particular questions “from which [the Justices] will themselves strike out such as any circumstances might, in their opinion, forbid them to pronounce on.” Id., at 487. On August 8, 1793, the Justices responded in a categorical and decidedly “impatient” manner, saying that the giving of advisory opinions — not just advisory opinions on particular questions but all advisory opinions, presumably even those concerning legislation affecting the Judiciary — was beyond their power. “[T]he lines of separation drawn by the Constitution between the three departments of the government” prevented it. Id., at 488. The Court rejected the more “cautious” course of not “denying] all hopes of intervention,” post, at 310, but leaving the door open to the possibility that at least some advisory opinions (on a theory we could not yet imagine) would not violate the separation of powers. In Gilligan v. Morgan, 413 U. S. 1, 7 (1973), a case filed after the Ohio National Guard’s shooting *303of students at Kent State University, the plaintiffs sought “initial judicial review and continuing surveillance by a federal court over the training, weaponry, and orders of the Guard.” The Court held the suit nonjusticiable; the matter was committed to the political branches because, inter alia, “it is difficult to conceive of an area of governmental activity in which the courts have less competence.” Id., at 10. The Court did not adopt the more “cautious” course of letting the lower courts try their hand at regulating the military before we declared it impossible. Most recently, in Nixon v. United States, the Court, joined by Justice Kennedy, held that a claim that the Senate had employed certain impermissible procedures in trying an impeachment was a nonjusticia-ble political question. Our decision was not limited to the particular procedures under challenge, and did not reserve the possibility that sometime, somewhere, technology or the wisdom derived from experience might make a court challenge to Senate impeachment all right.
The only cases Justice Kennedy cites in defense of his never-say-never approach are Baker v. Carr and Bandemer. See post, at 310-311. Bandemer provides no cover. There, all of the Justices who concluded that political gerrymandering claims are justiciable proceeded to describe what they regarded as the discernible and manageable standard that rendered it so. The lower courts were set wandering in the wilderness for 18 years not because the Bandemer majority thought it a good idea, but because five Justices could not agree upon a single standard, and because the standard the plurality proposed turned out not to work.
As for Baker v. Carr: It is true enough that, having had no experience whatever in apportionment matters of any sort, the Court there refrained from spelling out the equal protection standard. (It did so a mere two years later in Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533 (1964).) But the judgment under review in Baker, unlike the one under review here, did not demand the determination of a standard. The lower *304court in Baker had held the apportionment claim of the plaintiffs nonjusticiable, and so it was logically possible to dispose of the appeal by simply disagreeing with the nonjusti-ciability determination. As we observed earlier, that is not possible here, where the lower court has held the claim justi-ciable but unsupported by the facts. We must either enunciate the standard that causes us to agree or disagree with that merits judgment, or else affirm that the claim is beyond our competence to adjudicate.
Justice Kennedy worries that “[a] determination by the Court to deny all hopes of intervention could erode confidence in the courts as much as would a premature decision to intervene.” Post, at 310. But it is the function of the courts to provide relief, not hope. What we think would erode confidence is the Court’s refusal to do its job — announcing that there may well be a valid claim here, but we are not yet prepared to figure it out. Moreover, that course does more than erode confidence; by placing the district courts back in the business of pretending to afford help when they in fact can give none, it deters the political process from affording genuine relief. As was noted by a lower court confronted with a political gerrymandering claim:
“When the Supreme Court resolves Vieth, it may choose to retreat from its decision that the question is justicia-ble, or it may offer more guidance on the nature of the required effect.... We have learned firsthand what will result if the Court chooses to do neither. Throughout this case we have borne witness to the powerful, conflicting forces nurtured by Bandemer’s holding that the judiciary is to address ‘excessive’ partisan line-drawing, while leaving the issue virtually unenforceable. Inevitably, as the political party in power uses district lines to lock in its present advantage, the party out of power attempts to stretch the protective cover of the Voting Rights Act, urging dilution of critical standards that may, if accepted, aid their party in the short-run but *305work to the detriment of persons now protected by the Act in the long-run. Casting the appearance both that there is a wrong and that the judiciary stands ready with a remedy, Bandemer as applied steps on legislative incentives for self-correction.” Session, 298 F. Supp. 2d, at 474.
But the conclusive refutation of Justice Kennedy’s position is the point we first made: it is not an available disposition. We can affirm because political districting presents a nonjusticiable question; or we can affirm because we believe the correct standard which identifies unconstitutional political districting has not been met; we cannot affirm because we do not know what the correct standard is. Reduced to its essence, Justice Kennedy’s opinion boils down to this: “As presently advised, I know of no discernible and manageable standard that can render this claim justiciable. I am unhappy about that, and hope that I will be able to change my opinion in the future.” What are the lower courts to make of this pronouncement? We suggest that they must treat it as a reluctant fifth vote against justiciability at district and statewide levels — a vote that may change in some future case but that holds, for the time being, that this matter is nonjusticiable.
VI
We conclude that neither Article I, § 2, nor the Equal Protection Clause, nor (what appellants only fleetingly invoke) Article I, § 4, provides a judicially enforceable limit on the political considerations that the States and Congress may take into account when districting.
Considerations of stare decisis do not compel us to allow Bandemer to stand. That case involved an interpretation of the Constitution, and the claims of stare decisis are at their weakest in that field, where our mistakes cannot be corrected by Congress. See Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 828 (1991). They are doubly weak in Bandemer because the ma*306jority’s inability to enunciate the judicially discernible and manageable standard that it thought existed (or did not think did not exist) presaged the need for reconsideration in light of subsequent experience. And they are triply weak because it is hard to imagine how any action taken in reliance upon Bandemer could conceivably be frustrated — except the bringing of lawsuits, which is not the sort of primary conduct that is relevant.
While we do not lightly overturn one of our own holdings, “when governing decisions are unworkable or are badly reasoned, ‘this Court has never felt constrained to follow precedent.’ ” 501 U. S., at 827 (quoting Smith v. Allwright, 321 U. S. 649, 665 (1944)). Eighteen years of essentially pointless litigation have persuaded us that Bandemer is incapable of principled application. We would therefore overrule that case, and decline to adjudicate these political gerrymandering claims.
The judgment of the District Court is affirmed.

It is so ordered.

 Justice Souter would allow a State, in proving its affirmative defense, to demonstrate that the reasons given for the district’s shape “were more than a mere pretext for an old-fashioned gerrymander.” Post, at 852. But the need to establish that affirmative defense does not arise *298until the plaintiff has established his prima facie case. And that prima facie case fails when, under step two, the district on its face complies with traditional districting criteria.