Page:United States Reports, Volume 542.djvu/853

950 Rh strength. It bears emphasis, however, that had the Court in Vieth adopted a standard for adjudicating partisan gerrymandering claims, the standard likely would have been satisfied in this case. Appellees alleged that the House and Senate plans were the result of an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The District Court rejected that claim because it considered itself bound by the plurality opinion in Davis v. Bandemer,, and appellees could not show that they had been "'essentially shut out of the political process.'" App. to Juris. Statement 86a (quoting Bandemer, 478 U.S., at 139). Appellees do not challenge that ruling, and it is not before us. But the District Court's detailed factual findings regarding appellees' equal protection claim confirm that an impermissible partisan gerrymander is visible to the judicial eye and subject to judicially manageable standards. Indeed, the District Court's findings make clear that appellees could satisfy either the standard endorsed by the Court in its racial gerrymandering cases or that advocated in Justice Powell's dissent in Bandemer, 478 U.S., at 173–185.

Drawing district lines that have no neutral justification in order to place two incumbents of the opposite party in the same district is probative of the same impermissible intent as the "uncouth twenty-eight-sided ﬁgure" that defined the boundary of Tuskegee, Alabama, in Gomillion v. Lightfoot,, 340 (1960), or the "dragon descending on Philadelphia from the west" that defined Pennsylvania's District 6 in Vieth, 541 U.S., at 340 ( dissenting) (internal quotation marks omitted). The record in this case, like the allegations in Gomillion and in Vieth, reinforce my conclusion that "the unavailability of judicially