Justia Opinion Summary and Annotations

In 2011, Texas adopted a new congressional districting plan and new districting maps for the state legislature. The Equal Protection Clause forbids “racial gerrymandering,” but Texas is also subject to section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which is violated when a state districting plan provides “less opportunity” for racial minorities “to elect representatives of their choice.” Texas was also subject to section 5, which barred it from making any districting changes unless it could prove that they did not result in retrogression with respect to the ability of racial minorities to elect the candidates of their choice.

The plan was challenged in a Texas district court. Texas submitted the plans for preclearance to the District of Columbia Circuit. For the upcoming primaries, the Supreme Court instructed the Texas court to start with the 2011 plans and make adjustments required by the Constitution and the VRA. The Texas court adopted new interim plans, which, after the D.C. Circuit denied preclearance, were used for the 2012 elections. The state repealed the 2011 plans and enacted the Texas court’s plans with minor modifications. After the Supreme Court’s 2013 “Shelby County” holding, Texas, no longer covered by section 5, obtained a vacatur of the preclearance order. The Texas court allowed a challenge to the 2013 plans and held that challenges to the 2011 plans remained live. Texas conducted its 2014 and 2016 elections under the 2013 plans. In 2017, the Texas court found defects in several districts in the 2011 federal congressional and State House plans; invalidated multiple Congressional and House Districts in the 2013 plans, holding that the Legislature failed to cure the “taint” of discriminatory intent allegedly harbored by the 2011 Legislature; held that three districts were invalid because they had the effect of depriving Latinos of the equal opportunity to elect their candidates of choice; found that HD90 was a racial gerrymander; and gave the state attorney general three days to respond.

Assuming jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 1253, the Court concluded that the orders qualify as interlocutory injunctions; the short time frame the attorney general was given indicated that the court did not intend to allow the elections to go ahead under the plans it had condemned. The Texas court erred in requiring the state to show that the 2013 Legislature purged the “taint” attributed to the never-used plans enacted by a prior legislature. The “good faith of [the] state legislature must be presumed.” The 2011 Legislature’s intent and the court’s interim plans, weighed with other evidence, “is plainly insufficient to prove that the 2013 Legislature acted in bad faith and engaged in intentional discrimination.” The Court reversed as to the three districts in which the Texas court relied on section 2’s “effects” test but affirmed that HD90 is a racial gerrymander. For a section 2 “effects” claim, a plaintiff must establish a geographically compact minority population sufficient to constitute a majority in a single-member district, political cohesion among the members of the minority group, bloc voting by the majority to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate, and that the district lines dilute the votes of the minority group.

Annotation

Primary Holding

Supreme Court rejects district court’s conclusion that a 2013 Texas redistricting plan was tainted by the bias of a previous legislature and that certain districts were invalid as having the effect of depriving Latinos of the equal opportunity to elect their candidates of choice.