Rucho v. Common Cause
The Supreme Court ruled that federal courts have no role to play in policing partisan gerrymandering, even when state lawmakers openly draw districts to lock in their party's advantage.
The decision means federal judges will not referee claims that a map is 'too partisan,' leaving that fight to state courts, state constitutions, ballot initiatives, and Congress instead.
How it got here: Federal trial courts in both North Carolina and Maryland ruled for the challengers and struck down the maps; the state officials appealed directly to the Supreme Court.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Voters in North Carolina sued over a Republican-drawn congressional map designed to produce a 10-3 Republican delegation regardless of the statewide vote. Voters in Maryland sued over a Democratic-drawn map designed to flip a single district from Republican to Democratic control. Both groups argued the maps unconstitutionally diluted their votes because of their political party affiliation.
The question before the Court
Can federal courts step in to strike down election maps because state lawmakers drew them to heavily favor their own political party?
The Court's answer
No — the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts cannot decide claims that a map is unconstitutionally partisan, because there's no neutral legal yardstick for measuring how much political favoritism in map-drawing crosses a constitutional line. The Constitution doesn't guarantee political parties a share of seats matching their share of votes, so any court-imposed fix would require judges to pick their own definition of "fair" — a political judgment, not a legal one.
The Court left in place its willingness to hear related but different claims: population-based ("one person, one vote") challenges and racial-gerrymandering claims, both of which have workable legal tests. But for claims resting purely on partisan advantage, the Court held that voters must look to state courts, state constitutions, ballot initiatives, or Congress for relief instead.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Voters challenging maps drawn to entrench one party in power can no longer sue in federal court on that basis. States that want to limit partisan map-drawing must do so through their own constitutions, legislation, or independent redistricting commissions, since the federal courts have taken themselves out of the fight entirely.
What changes now
The North Carolina and Maryland rulings are vacated, and the cases go back to the district courts with instructions to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, since the courts concluded they had no authority to hear partisan gerrymandering claims at all. The decision is final on the question of federal court authority; further efforts to combat partisan gerrymandering will have to come from state courts applying state constitutions, state ballot initiatives creating independent redistricting commissions, or Congress using its power under the Elections Clause.
What this does not decide
The ruling does not say partisan gerrymandering is lawful or constitutional, and it does not affect claims of racial gerrymandering or population-based (one-person, one-vote) violations, which remain fully reviewable in federal court. It only holds that federal courts cannot referee purely partisan-gerrymandering claims.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Kagan
Justice Kagan argued that lower courts had already developed a workable, neutral three-part test -- examining predominant partisan intent, substantial vote-dilution effects measured against computer-generated maps using the state's own non-partisan criteria, and lack of a legitimate justification. She contended this test avoided any judge-made vision of fairness and would only strike down the most extreme gerrymanders, and that the majority's refusal to act abandoned constitutional rights to equal participation and free association with no other adequate remedy available.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court began by asking whether partisan gerrymandering claims are the kind of dispute federal courts are built to resolve, noting that some constitutional questions are 'political questions' left to the elected branches because courts lack a legal yardstick to measure them.
- The Court found that partisan gerrymandering claims ultimately ask judges to decide how much political power a party 'deserves' relative to its share of votes -- a question of fairness, not law, since the Constitution never requires proportional representation between parties.
- Because there is no single agreed-upon definition of fairness in this context (competitive districts, proportional safe seats, or adherence to traditional map-drawing criteria could all qualify), the Court concluded there is no neutral legal baseline from which to measure when a map has become too partisan.
- The Court distinguished this problem from claims it does hear -- one-person-one-vote cases (a simple math-based equality rule) and racial gerrymandering cases (which ask courts to eliminate race as a factor entirely) -- because neither offers a workable template for weighing 'how much politics is too much.'
- Applying that reasoning, the Court rejected each test the lower courts and the dissent proposed, including intent-and-effects tests borrowed from racial-gerrymandering law and a test measuring maps against a computer-generated 'median' map, concluding all of them still left the core question -- how much partisan advantage crosses the line -- without a legal answer.
- The Court concluded that policing partisan gerrymandering claims would require judges to act as political referees with no textual or historical basis in the Constitution for doing so, placing the issue outside the federal courts' competence.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Vieth v. Jubelirer (541 U. S. 267)
The Court leans on the Vieth plurality's conclusion that no judicially manageable standard exists for these claims.
Reaffirms Gill v. Whitford
The Court relies on Gill's statement that partisan gerrymandering cases leave unresolved whether such claims are justiciable.