League of Latin American Citizens v. Perry - Opinion Announcement

Argument of Speaker

Mr. Speaker: Justice Kennedy has the opinion in 05-204, League of United Latin American Citizens versus Perry, and the consolidated cases.

Argument of Justice Kennedy

Mr. Kennedy: These are consolidated cases that come to us on appeal on the appellants’ challenge, a Congressional redistricting map that the Texas Legislature enacted in 2003.

That 2003 legislative plan replaced a 2001 map.

The 2001 map had been drawn by the United States District Court in earlier litigation.

As the Court has organized the cases, we address three main issues that are presented on the appeals: as to some of the issues there is a judgment on the Court, as to other … of the Court, as to other issues there is an opinion for the Court, and I’ll proceed through those three in order.

First, the appellants contend that the new plan is an unconstitutional statewide political gerrymander.

They attack the congressional districting statewide.

Second, they argue that the plan’s elimination of Congressional District 24 dilutes the Voting Rights Act -- the voting rights of African-Americans in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The Section 2 prohibits district lines being drawn in a manner that dilutes the votes of the minority group, so long as that group can satisfy the criteria known as the Gingles factors or, you know, jurisprudence.

The third claim is also a Section 2 claim.

There, the appellants challenge the plan’s alteration to District 23 as an unlawful dilution of the voting rights of Latinos in that district.

The District Court ruled against the appellants on all of these three claims.

First, as to the statewide gerrymandering, two terms ago in a case named Vieth versus Jubelirer, five members of this Court agreed that such a claim presents a controversy capable of judicial resolution.

We do not revisit that question, but we do conclude that the appellant’s statewide partisan gerrymandering claims must fail in this case.

The appellants argue this case is different than Vieth and point to the mid-decade character of the plan’s enactment.

They assert the plan was solely motivated by partisan objectives that serve no legitimate purpose and burdened one political group.

Neither the Constitution nor Federal Statutes indicate that it is inherently suspect for a legislature to replace a court-ordered plan with one of its own, and the fact of a mid-decade redistricting alone is no sure indication of an unlawful political gerrymandering.

At the very end of this claim, the appellants contend that the 2003 plan violates the Constitution’s one person/one vote requirement, and this argument, which depends entirely on reasoning that mirrors the attack on the mid-decade redistricting, similarly fails.

The challenge to the statewide redistricting as an unconstitutional gerrymandering therefore is rejected.

On this aspect of the case, the Chief Justice, joined by Justice Alito, concur in the judgment; Justice Scalia, joined by Justice Thomas, would dismiss these claims as nonjusticiable; Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer join the portion of the judgment declining to revisit justiciability.

Justices Souter and Ginsburg join in rejecting the appellant’s one person/one vote claim; and Justice Stevens in a separate opinion, joined by Justice Breyer, would have found a statewide unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering.

So the second claim refers to District 24.

The appellant’s contend that the new plan’s elimination of former District 24 violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

They argue that because African-American voters control this Dallas district, its elimination unlawfully dilutes their voting rights.

Prior to the 2003 plan, District 24 voters had elected an Anglo Democrat by the name of Martin Frost in every election since 1978.

Even if African-Americans in the old District 24 can state a vote-dilution claim with only 25% of the voting population, they cannot surmount the District Court’s rejection of their questionable evidence about their ability to elect an African-American candidate of their choice.

The Chief Justice and Justice Alito join my opinion on this point; Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas rely on their position, stated in an earlier case of Holder v. Hall, concur in the judgment on the grounds that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act does not apply to challenges such as these; in a separate opinion joined by Justice Ginsburg, Justice Souter would have held that a minority group comprising less than 50% of a district’s voting population can state a Section 2 vote-dilution claim; Justice Souter also concluded that Congressman Frost’s support in the African-American community showed he was their candidate of choice, and for these reasons he would vacate the judgment of the District Court and remand for further proceedings; Justice Stevens would have found the elimination of District 24 to be an unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering.

So the judgment of the Court on this issue is that the challenge to the drawing of the lines for the new District 24 is rejected.

That brings us to District 23.

In order to protect a Republican incumbent who was losing support from Latino voters, the effect of the new plan on District 23 was to bring in more Republican voting Anglos while reducing the number of Latinos.

These changes, of course, required an adjustment elsewhere.

This resulted in the new District 25, a long, thin strip of land stretching from Austin to the Mexican border.

The new District 23 is not a Latino-opportunity district, and appellants contend this change violates Section 2.

This part of the case is disposed of by an opinion of the Court, written by me and joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer.

Unlike in former District 24, the Gingles requirements for stating a threshold claim under Section 2 are satisfied for old District 23.

There is no dispute that old District 23’s Latinos are politically cohesive and that voting in the district was racially polarized.

The group of Latino voters in old District 23 is also sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district.

The creation of a new District 25, we hold, does not offset this loss.

The District Court found that new District 25 would consistently elect a Latino candidate of choice, but in our view that does not suffice.

The District Court did not appreciate that creating a noncompact district fails to compensate for dismantling a compact-opportunity district.

Having found the threshold considerations for Section 2 claim satisfied, we look to the totality of the circumstances.

After doing so, we conclude that the elimination of the opportunity district violates Section 2.

The Chief Justice, joined by Justice Alito, would have found no Section 2 violation with respect to Section 23; he would have concluded that new District 25 was an effective minority-opportunity district and that, even if it were not, the totality of the circumstances weighed against finding a Section 2 violation; Justices Scalia and Thomas concur in that dissenting position, again for the reasons that they stated in Holder versus Hall.

In summary, because the 2003 Plan violates Section 2, the Court does not address the claim that use of race in politics in drawing District 23 violates equal protection under the First Amendment Clause.

The Court also does not address the claim of equal-protection violation in the drawing of District 25; Justice Scalia, in an opinion joined by the Chief Justice and Justices Thomas and Alito, would have concluded the Texas had a strong basis for believing that new District 25 was necessary to comply with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

He has concluded that because compliance with Section 5 is a compelling State interest, the district popularly rejected the race-based equal-protection challenge to District 25.

In summary, the judgment of the District Court is affirmed in part, reversed in part and vacated in part, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.