Vieth v. Jubelirer Court Documents Supreme Court of the United States 541 U.S. 267 (2004) Attached here: Plurality opinion, concurring opinions, and dissenting opinions (relevant sections highlighted) This document is also available on the Brennan Center’s website here: http://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/coming-battle-over-partisan-gerrymandering 541 U.S. 267 VIETH v. JUBELIRER 1769 Cite as 124 S.Ct. 1769 (2004) standing alone. They call attention to un- mined that plan did not satisfy one person- tidy details, and rightly understood legisla- one vote requirement. Following enact- tion can be untidy: statutes can be un- ment of new plan and renewal of constitu- systematic, redundant, and fuzzy about tional challenge, a three-judge panel of the drawing lines. As a purely textual matter, District Court, 241 F.Supp.2d 478, ap- both the majority’s reading and mine have proved the plan, and voters appealed. strengths and weaknesses. The point is Holding: The Supreme Court, Justice that the tie breakers cut in favor of sus- Scalia, held that political gerrymandering taining the South Coast Fleet Rules. My claims were nonjusticiable. reading adheres more closely to the legis- Affirmed. lative history of § 209(a). It takes proper account of the fact that the Fleet Rules Justice Kennedy filed opinion concurring with this commercial availability condition in the judgment. do not require manufacturers, even indi- Justice Stevens filed dissenting opinion. rectly, to produce a new kind of engine. Justice Souter filed dissenting opinion in And, most importantly, my reading ad- which Justice Ginsburg joined. heres to the well-established presumption against preemption. Justice Breyer filed dissenting opinion. Federal Courts O13.20 , Claim of political gerrymandering in congressional redistricting plan was non- justiciable, because there were no judicial- ly discernible and manageable standards 541 U.S. 267, 158 L.Ed.2d 546 for adjudicating such a claim. (Per Justice Richard VIETH, Norma Jean Vieth, Scalia with the Chief Justice and two Jus- and Susan Furey, Appellants, tices joining, and one Justice joining in result). v. Robert C. JUBELIRER, President of Syllabus * the Pennsylvania Senate, et al. After Pennsylvania’s General Assem- No. 02–1580. bly adopted a congressional redistricting Argued Dec. 10, 2003. plan, plaintiffs-appellants sued to enjoin Decided April 28, 2004. the plan’s implementation, alleging, inter alia, that it constituted a political gerry- Background: Voters brought action mander in violation of Article I and the against Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protec- challenging constitutionality of congres- tion Clause. The three-judge District sional redistricting plan. Following dis- Court dismissed the gerrymandering missal of other claims, 188 F.Supp.2d 532, claim, and the plaintiffs appealed. three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Held: The judgment is affirmed. Pennsylvania, 195 F.Supp.2d 672, deter- 241 F.Supp.2d 478, affirmed. * The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion the reader. See United States v. Detroit Tim- of the Court but has been prepared by the ber & Lumber Co., 200 U.S. 321, 337, 26 S.Ct. Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of 282, 50 L.Ed. 499. 1770 124 SUPREME COURT REPORTER 541 U.S. 267 Justice SCALIA, joined by THE simply applied the Bandemer S 268plurality’s CHIEF JUSTICE, Justice O’CONNOR, standard, almost invariably producing the and Justice THOMAS, concluded that po- same result as would have obtained had litical gerrymandering claims are nonjusti- the question been nonjusticiable: Judicial ciable because no judicially discernible and intervention has been refused. Eighteen manageable standards for adjudicating years of judicial effort with virtually noth- such claims exist. They would therefore ing to show for it justifies revisiting wheth- overrule Davis v. Bandemer, 478 U.S. 109, er the standard promised by Bandemer 106 S.Ct. 2797, 92 L.Ed.2d 85, in which exists. Pp. 1776–1778. this Court held that political gerrymander- (2) The Bandemer plurality’s stan- ing claims are justiciable, but could not dard—that a political gerrymandering agree upon a standard for assessing politi- claim can succeed only where the plaintiffs cal gerrymandering claims. Pp. 1774– show ‘‘both intentional discrimination 1792. against an identifiable political group and (a) Political gerrymanders existed in an actual discriminatory effect on that colonial times and continued through the group,’’ 478 U.S., at 127, 106 S.Ct. 2797— framing. The Framers provided a reme- has proved unmanageable in application. dy for the problem: The Constitution Because that standard was misguided gives state legislatures the initial power to when proposed, has not been improved in draw federal election districts, but author- subsequent application, and is not even izes Congress to ‘‘make or alter’’ those defended by the appellants in this Court, it districts. U.S. Const., Art. I, § 4. In Ban- should not be affirmed as a constitutional demer, the Court held that the Equal Pro- requirement. Pp. 1778–1780. tection Clause also grants judges the pow- (3) Appellants’ proposed two-pronged er—and duty—to control that practice. standard based on Art. I, § 2, and the Pp. 1774–1776. Equal Protection Clause is neither discer- (b) Neither Art. I, § 2 or § 4, nor the nible nor manageable. Appellants are Equal Protection Clause, provides a judi- mistaken when they contend that their cially enforceable limit on the political con- intent prong (‘‘predominant intent’’) is no siderations that the States and Congress different from that which this Court has may take into account when districting. applied in racial gerrymandering cases. Pp. 1776–1784. In those cases, the predominant intent test (1) Among the tests for determining is applied to the challenged district in the existence of a ‘‘nonjusticiable’’ or ‘‘po- which the plaintiffs voted, see, e.g., Miller litical’’ question is a lack of judicially dis- v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900, 115 S.Ct. 2475, coverable and manageable standards for 132 L.Ed.2d 762, whereas here appellants resolving the question. Baker v. Carr, 369 assert that their test is satisfied only when U.S. 186, 217, 82 S.Ct. 691, 7 L.Ed.2d 663. partisan advantage was the predominant Because the Bandemer Court was ‘‘not motivation behind the entire statewide persuaded’’ that there are no such stan- plan. Vague as a predominant motivation dards for deciding political gerrymander- test might be when used to evaluate single ing cases, 478 U.S., at 123, 106 S.Ct. 2797, districts, it all but evaporates when applied such cases were justiciable. However, the statewide. For this and other reasons, the six-Justice majority in Bandemer could not racial gerrymandering cases provide no discern what the standards might be. For comfort. The effects prong of appellants’ the past 18 years, the lower courts have proposal requires (1) that the plaintiffs 541 U.S. 269 VIETH v. JUBELIRER 1771 Cite as 124 S.Ct. 1769 (2004) show that the rival party’s voters are sys- standards for measuring whether a politi- tematically ‘‘packed’’ or ‘‘cracked’’; and (2) cal gerrymander burdens the representa- that the court be persuaded from the total- tional rights of a party’s voters. Pp. 1784– ity of the circumstances that the map can 1792. thwart the plaintiffs’ ability to translate a (d) Stare decisis does not require that majority of votes into a majority of seats. Bandemer be allowed to stand. Stare de- This standard is not discernible because cisis claims are at their weakest with re- the Constitution provides no right to pro- spect to a decision interpreting the Consti- portional representation. Even were the tution, particularly where there has been standard discernible, it is not judicially no reliance on that decision. P. 1792. manageable. There is no effective way to ascertain a party’s majority status, and, in Justice KENNEDY, while agreeing any event, majority status in statewide that appellants’ complaint must be dis- races does not establish majority status for missed, concluded that all possibility of particular district contests. Moreover, judicial relief should not be foreclosed in even if a majority party could be identi- cases such as this because a limited and fied, it would be impossible to ensure that precise rationale may yet be found to cor- it won a majority of seats unless the rect an established constitutional violation. States’ traditional election structures were Courts confront two obstacles when pre- radically revised. Pp. 1780–1784. sented with a claim of injury from partisan (4) For many of the same reasons, gerrymandering. First is the lack of com- Justice Powell’s Bandemer standard—a to- prehensive and neutral principles for tality-of-the-circumstances analysis that drawing electoral boundaries. No sub- evaluates districts with an eye to ascer- stantive definition of fairness in districting taining whether the particular gerryman- commands general assent. Second is the der is not ‘‘fair’’—must also be rejected. absence of rules to limit and confine judi- ‘‘Fairness’’ is not a judicially manageable cial intervention. That courts can grant standard. Some criterion more solid and relief in districting cases involving race more demonstrably S 269met than that is does not answer the need for fairness prin- necessary to enable state legislatures to ciples, since those cases involve sorting discern the limits of their districting dis- permissible districting classifications from cretion, to meaningfully constrain the impermissible ones. Politics is a different courts’ discretion, and to win public accep- matter. Gaffney v. Cummings, 412 U.S. tance for the courts’ intrusion into a pro- 735, 93 S.Ct. 2321, 37 L.Ed.2d 298. A cess that is the very foundation of demo- determination that a gerrymander violates cratic decisionmaking. Pp. 1784. the law must rest on something more than (c) Writing separately in dissent, Jus- the conclusion that political classifications tices STEVENS, SOUTER, and BREYER were applied.