Redistricting II:

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Redistricting II

• Law, precedents, and the
• Texas case

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Background

• One man one vote
• Baker v. Carr
• Wesberry v. Sanders
• Voting Rights Act of 1965
• Section 2

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Section 2

• Based on the totality of circumstances, it is
  shown that the political processes leading to
  nomination or election in the State or political
  subdivision are not equally open to participation
  by members of (a protected group) in that its
  members have less opportunity than other members
  of the electorate to participate in the political
  process and to elect representatives of their
  choice. The extent to which members of a
  protected class have been electedis one
  circumstance that may be considered Provided
  that nothing in this section establishes a right
  to have members of a protected class elected in
  numbers equal to their proportion in the
  population.

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Background

• One man one vote
• Baker v. Carr
• Wesberry v. Sanders
• Voting Rights Act of 1965
• Section 2
• Section 5
• Racial gerrymandering when race for its own sake
  and not for other redistricting principles is the
  legislatures dominant and controlling rationale
  in drawing its district lines and the legislature
  subordinates traditional race-neutral districting
  principles to racial considerations.

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Background

• One man one vote
• Baker v. Carr
• Wesberry v. Sanders
• Voting Rights Act of 1965
• Section 2
• Section 5
• Racial gerrymandering
• Shaw v. Reno
• Miller v. Johnson
• Shaw v. Hunt

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Background (cont.)

• Partisan gerrymandering
• Davis v. Bandemer
• Vieth et al. v. Jubelirer

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Kennedys dissent

• The Courts own responsibilities require that we
  refrain from intervention in this instance. The
  failings of the many proposed standards for
  measuring the burden a gerrymander imposes on
  representational rights make our intervention
  improper. If workable standards do emerge to
  measure these burdens, however, courts should be
  prepared to order relief.
• The First Amendment may be the more relevant
  constitutional provision in future cases that
  allege unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering.
  After all, these allegations involve the First
  Amendment interest of not burdening or penalizing
  citizens because of their participation in the
  electoral process, their voting history, their
  association with a political party, or their
  expression of political views.

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Oral Argument Wednesday!

• League of United Latin American Citizens, Travis
  County, Jackson, Eddie and GI Forum of Texas v.
  Perry, Rick (Texas Gov.)

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Texas background

• 2001 court drawn plan
• 2003 Republican legislature redraws district
  lines
• 2005 district court says new lines ok
• MAPS

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League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry

• 1. A redistricting plan drawn with the
  singleminded purpose of gaining additional
  partisan advantage, using three year old census
  data that overpopulates Latino districts,
  violates the one person one vote rule
• 2. A redistricting plan drawn with the
  singleminded purpose of gaining additional
  partisan advantage, using three year old census
  data that overpopulates Latino districts,
  eliminates a Latino majority district,
  Congressional District 23 (CD 23), and eliminates
  all competitive districts in which the minority
  vote had been the deciding vote under the
  pre-existing legal redistricting plan, is an
  impermissible political gerrymander in violation
  of the First and Fourteenth Amendment
• Partisan gerrymandering and partisan voting
  cannot be used as a subterfuge to discount
  evidence of minority vote dilution such as the
  elimination of a Latino majority district and
  racially polarized voting, to defeat a minority
  communitys claim of violation of the Voting
  Rights Act and the First and Fourteenth Amendment

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Travis County v. Perry

• The Texas legislatures 2003 replacement of a
  legally valid congressional districting plan with
  a statewide plan, enacted for the single-minded
  purpose of gaining partisan advantage, violates
  the stringent constitutional rule of one man one
  vote because populations in the new districts
  will not be equal.

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Jackson v. Perry

• The Equal Protection Clause (one man, one vote)
  and the First Amendment prohibit States from
  redrawing lawful districting plans in the middle
  of the decade, for the sole purpose of maximizing
  partisan advantage.
• Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act forbids a
  state from destroying a district effectively
  controlled by African-American voters, merely
  because it is impossible to draw a district in
  which African-Americans constitute an absolute
  mathematical majority of the population.
• A bizarre-looking congressional district, which
  was intentionally drawn as a majority-Latino
  district by connecting two far-flung pockets of
  dense urban population with a 300-mile-long rural
  land bridge, is an unconstitutional racial
  gerrymander that just serves partisan political
  ends because drawing a compact majority-Latino
  district would have required the mapmakers to
  compromise their political goal of maximizing
  Republican seats elsewhere in the State.

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GI Forum v. Perry

• Political partisanship is insufficient rationale
  under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the
  Constitution, to dismantle a Latino-majority
  district to elect the Anglo-preferred candidate.
• Section 2 does not permit a state to offset the
  dismantling of a majority-minority district in
  one part of the state with another in another
  part of the state

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The States argument

• The 2003 Texas redistricting replaced an
  antimajoritarian court-drawn map that had
  perpetuated much of a 1991 Democratic Party
  gerrymander with a map that resulted in a
  congressional delegation better reflecting the
  States voting patterns
• 2. It is not unconstitutional for a state to
  voluntarily redistrict either in conjunction with
  an alleged partisan gerrymander or as a
  derivative consequence of this Courts
  one-person, one-vote standards.
• 3. The district court correctly found that 2 of
  the Voting Rights Act was not violated by the
  alteration of specific districts in the 2003 map
  in particular old Congressional Districts 24
  and 23, neither of which was found to be
  controlled by minority voters
• 4. The district court correctly found that the
  creation of new Congressional District 25 did not
  constitute an unconstitutional racial gerrymander
  
• 5. 2 of the Voting Rights Act did not obligate
  the State of Texas to create seven out of seven
  districts in South and West Texas as Hispanic
  opportunity districts

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Issues for debate

• Legality of dismantling majority-minority
  districts
• Legality of de facto dilution of minority votes
• Legality of mid-decade redistricting
• Legality of partisan gerrymanders

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(No Transcript)
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Equal protection clause

• No State shall make or enforce any law which
  shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
  citizens of the United States nor shall any
  State deprive any person of life, liberty, or
  property, without due process of law nor deny to
  any person within its jurisdiction the equal
  protection of the laws.
• --14th Amendment