Cite as: 588 U. S. ____ (2019)
21
Opinion of the Court
tial in proportion to its number of supporters. As we
stated unanimously in Gill, “this Court is not responsible
for vindicating generalized partisan preferences. The
Court’s constitutionally prescribed role is to vindicate the
individual rights of the people appearing before it.” 585
U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 21). See also Bandemer, 478
U. S., at 150 (opinion of O’Connor, J.) (“[T]he Court has
not accepted the argument that an ‘asserted entitlement
to group representation’ . . . can be traced to the one person, one vote principle.” (quoting Bolden, 446 U. S., at
77)).*
Nor do our racial gerrymandering cases provide an
appropriate standard for assessing partisan gerrymandering. “[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 I, 509 U. S., at 650 (citation omitted). Unlike partisan gerrymandering claims, a
racial gerrymandering claim does not ask for a fair share
of political power and influence, with all the justiciability
conundrums that entails. It asks instead for the elimination of a racial classification. A partisan gerrymandering
claim cannot ask for the elimination of partisanship.
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* The dissent’s observation that the Framers viewed political parties
“with deep suspicion, as fomenters of factionalism and symptoms of
disease in the body politic” post, at 9, n. 1 (opinion of KAGAN, J.) (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted), is exactly right. Its
inference from that fact is exactly wrong. The Framers would have
been amazed at a constitutional theory that guarantees a certain
degree of representation to political parties.