Facts
- After the 2000 census, Pennsylvania’s congressional seats decreased from 21 to 19, requiring redistricting.
- The Republican-controlled Pennsylvania General Assembly enacted a new congressional map (Act 1) in January 2002.
- Registered Democratic voters challenged Act 1 as an extreme partisan gerrymander intended to entrench Republican power and diminish Democratic voters’ electoral influence.
- Plaintiffs alleged violations of Article I and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, among other constitutional provisions.
- A three-judge federal district court rejected the partisan-gerrymandering claims and declined to enjoin Act 1.
- Plaintiffs appealed directly to the Supreme Court.
Issues
- Whether claims that a congressional redistricting plan is an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander are justiciable in federal court.
- If justiciable, what judicially manageable standard governs the determination that partisan line-drawing violates the Constitution.
- Whether Pennsylvania’s Act 1 violated the Constitution under any applicable standard for partisan gerrymandering.
Decision
- The Supreme Court affirmed the district court’s judgment, leaving Act 1 in effect.
- No single opinion commanded a majority.
- A four-Justice plurality concluded partisan-gerrymandering claims are nonjusticiable political questions because courts lack judicially discoverable and manageable standards; the plurality would have overruled prior precedent recognizing justiciability.
- Justice Kennedy concurred in the judgment, agreeing the plaintiffs failed to supply a workable, constitutionally grounded standard in this case, but declining to foreclose the possibility that a manageable standard could emerge in the future.
- Four Justices dissented, maintaining partisan-gerrymandering claims are justiciable and proposing differing standards under which the challenge should have proceeded or succeeded.
Legal Principles
- A claim may be nonjusticiable under the political question doctrine when there are no judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it.
- The Court did not adopt a controlling constitutional test for partisan gerrymandering; the judgment rested on the absence of an agreed, workable standard applicable to the plaintiffs’ challenge.
- Partisan intent and effect in redistricting, without a judicially manageable limiting principle, was viewed by the plurality as not susceptible to constitutional adjudication.
- A concurrence providing the decisive vote may concur in rejecting a particular claim while reserving the possibility that future cases could present a manageable standard consistent with constitutional constraints.
Conclusion
The Court upheld Pennsylvania’s congressional map because the plaintiffs’ partisan-gerrymandering theory lacked an accepted, workable judicial standard; although a plurality would have barred such claims as nonjusticiable, the controlling outcome left open the possibility of future adjudication if a manageable constitutional standard were developed.