Cite as: 588 U. S. ____ (2019)
13
Opinion of the Court
mandering has gone too far.” Vieth, 541 U. S., at 296
(plurality opinion). See League of United Latin American
Citizens v. Perry, 548 U. S. 399, 420 (2006) (LULAC) (opinion of Kennedy, J.) (difficulty is “providing a standard for
deciding how much partisan dominance is too much”).
We first considered a partisan gerrymandering claim in
Gaffney v. Cummings in 1973. There we rejected an equal
protection challenge to Connecticut’s redistricting plan,
which “aimed at a rough scheme of proportional representation of the two major political parties” by “wiggl[ing] and
joggl[ing] boundary lines” to create the appropriate number of safe seats for each party. 412 U. S., at 738, 752,
n. 18 (internal quotation marks omitted). In upholding
the State’s plan, we reasoned that districting “inevitably
has and is intended to have substantial political consequences.” Id., at 753.
Thirteen years later, in Davis v. Bandemer, we addressed a claim that Indiana Republicans had cracked and
packed Democrats in violation of the Equal Protection
Clause. 478 U. S. 109, 116–117 (1986) (plurality opinion).
A majority of the Court agreed that the case was justiciable, but the Court splintered over the proper standard to
apply. Four Justices would have required proof of “intentional discrimination against an identifiable political
group and an actual discriminatory effect on that group.”
Id., at 127. Two Justices would have focused on “whether
the boundaries of the voting districts have been distorted
deliberately and arbitrarily to achieve illegitimate ends.”
Id., at 165 (Powell, J., concurring in part and dissenting in
part). Three Justices, meanwhile, would have held that
the Equal Protection Clause simply “does not supply
judicially manageable standards for resolving purely
political gerrymandering claims.” Id., at 147 (O’Connor,
J., concurring in judgment). At the end of the day, there
was “no ‘Court’ for a standard that properly should be
applied in determining whether a challenged redistricting