Rucho v. Common Cause
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 27, 2019 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Decided
- June 27, 2019
- Term
- October Term 2018
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Roberts
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Chief Justice ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court. Voters and other plaintiffs in North Carolina and Maryland challenged their States' congressional districting maps as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders. The North Carolina plaintiffs complained that the State's districting plan discriminated against Democrats; the Maryland plaintiffs complained that their State's plan discriminated against Republicans. The plaintiffs alleged that the gerrymandering violated the First Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Elections Clause, and Article I, § 2, of the Constitution. The District Courts in both cases ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and the defendants appealed directly to this Court. These cases require us to consider once again whether claims of excessive partisanship in districting are "justiciable"-that is, properly suited for resolution by the federal courts. This Court has not previously struck down a districting plan as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander, and has struggled without success over the past several decades to discern judicially manageable standards for deciding such claims. The districting plans at issue here are highly partisan, by any measure. The question is whether the courts below appropriately exercised judicial power when they found them unconstitutional as well. I A The first case involves a challenge…
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