Page:United States Reports, Volume 542.djvu/854

Rh 947 manageable standards" cannot justify a refusal "to condemn even the most blatant violations of a state legislature's fundamental duty to govern impartially." Vieth, 541 U.S., at 341. I remain convinced that in time the present "failure of judicial will," ibid., will be replaced by stern condemnation of partisan gerrymandering that does not even pretend to be justified by neutral principles.  , dissenting.

When reviewing States' redistricting of their own legislative boundaries, we have been appropriately deferential. See Mahan v. Howell,, 327 (1973). A series of our cases established the principle that "minor deviations" among districts—deviations of less than 10%—are "'insufficient to make out a prima facie case of invidious discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment so as to require justification by the State.'" Brown v. Thomson,, 842 (1983) (quoting Gaffney v. Cummings, , 745 (1973)); see also Voinovich v. Quilter, , 160–162 (1993). This case presents a question that Brown, Gaffney, and Voinovich did not squarely confront—whether a districting plan that satisﬁes this 10% criterion may nevertheless be invalidated on the basis of circumstantial evidence of partisan political motivation.

The state ofﬁcials who drafted Georgia's redistricting plan believed the answer to that question was "no," reading our cases to establish a 10% "safe harbor" with which they meticulously complied. The court below disagreed. No party here contends that, beyond grand generalities in cases such as Reynolds v. Sims,, 577 (1964), this Court has addressed the question. The opinion below is consistent with others to have addressed the issue; there is no obvious conﬂict among the lower courts. This is not a petition for certiorari, however, but an appeal, and we should not summarily affirm unless it is clear that the disposition of this case is correct.

In my view, that is not clear. A substantial case can be made that Georgia's redistricting plan did comply with the Constitution. Appellees do not contend that the population deviations—all less than 5% from the mean—were based on race or some other suspect classification. They claim only impermissible political bias—that state legislators tried to improve the electoral chances of Democrats over Republicans by underpopulating inner city and 