12 RUCHO v. COMMON CAUSE KAGAN, J., dissenting partisan gerrymandering case is much the same, except that the dilution is based on party affiliation. In such a case, too, the districters have set out to reduce the weight of certain citizens’ votes, and thereby deprive them of their capacity to “full[y] and effective[ly] participat[e] in the political process[ ].” Id., at 565. As Justice Kennedy (in a controlling opinion) once hypothesized: If districters declared that they were drawing a map “so as most to burden [the votes of] Party X’s” supporters, it would violate the Equal Protection Clause. Vieth, 541 U. S., at 312. For (in the language of the one-person-one-vote decisions) it would infringe those voters’ rights to “equal [electoral] participation.” Reynolds, 377 U. S., at 566; see Gray v. Sanders, 372 U. S. 368, 379–380 (1963) (“The concept of ‘we the people’ under the Constitution visualizes no preferred class of voters but equality among those who meet the basic qualifications”). And partisan gerrymandering implicates the First Amendment too. That Amendment gives its greatest protection to political beliefs, speech, and association. Yet partisan gerrymanders subject certain voters to “disfavored treatment”—again, counting their votes for less— precisely because of “their voting history [and] their expression of political views.” Vieth, 541 U. S., at 314 (opinion of Kennedy, J.). And added to that strictly personal harm is an associational one. Representative democracy is “unimaginable without the ability of citizens to band together in [support of] candidates who espouse their political views.” California Democratic Party v. Jones, 530 U. S. 567, 574 (2000). By diluting the votes of certain citizens, the State frustrates their efforts to translate those affiliations into political effectiveness. See Gill, 585 U. S., at ___ (KAGAN, J., concurring) (slip op., at 9) (“Members of the disfavored party[,] deprived of their natural political strength[,] may face difficulties fundraising, registering voters, [and] eventually accomplishing their