'Racial or Partisan Gerrymandering: Supreme Court to Decide'

The National Conference of State Legislatures Blog's Lisa Soronen reported yesterday on two notable voting rights cases scheduled for review by SCOTUS later this term. The title of this post comes from that post, which states:

In many cases, judges disagree about how to apply the law. In some cases, judges disagree about the facts of the case or, more specifically, about what facts are important and what conclusions to draw from the facts. All this and more is what the federal district court majority and dissenters disagree about in two redistricting cases the U.S. Supreme Court will review.  

 

In Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama and Alabama Democratic Conference v. Alabama, the Supreme Court will decide whether Alabama’s redistricting plan violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by intentionally packing black voters into districts already containing a majority of black voters. 

 

The Alabama Legislature’s 2010 redistricting plan maintains the number of House and Senate majority-black districts. But because most of the majority-black districts were underpopulated, the Legislature “redrew the districts by shifting more black voters into the majority-black districts to maintain the same relative percentages of black voters in those districts.” Black voters allege that packing them into super-majority districts limits their potential influence in other jurisdictions.

 

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits vote dilution, where the legislature enacts a voting scheme that intentionally minimizes or cancels out the voting potential of racial or ethnic minorities. The 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause prohibits gerrymandering, or separating voters into districts based on race.

 

Two district court judges rejected the argument that vote dilution or racial gerrymandering occurred in this case, ruling that race wasn’t the predominate motiving factor in creating the districts. Instead, the judges ruled, the Legislature “maintained the cores of existing districts, made districts more compact where possible, kept almost all of the incumbents within their districts, and respected communities of interest where possible.” 

 

A dissenting judge disagreed. Judge Thompson opined that the drafters set a quota that they would not decrease the percent of black voters in any district. To achieve these quotas, the Legislature “eliminated existing districts, created conflicts between incumbents, ignored legislators’ preferences, and split of huge volume of precincts.”

 

Redistricting in compliance with the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution is a perennial issue for state legislatures.  

CRL&P related posts:

• Shelby County attorney sets sights on Texas apportionment scheme
• "(Mis)Trusting States to Run Elections"
• Shelby County's impact on voting rights policy will likely be 'deeply destabilizing,' argue Profs. Charles and Fuentes-Rohwer