Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama

Syllabus Notes

• A syllabus is released with the opinion for the reader's convenience, but it is not part of the Court's opinion.

• Reference: United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., $200 U. S. 321, 337$

Case: Alabama Legislative Black Caucus et al. v. Alabama et al.

• Case No. 13–895, argued November 12, 2014, and decided March 25, 2015.

• Consolidated with No. 13–1138, Alabama Democratic Conference et al. v. Alabama et al.

• In 2012, Alabama redrew the boundaries for its 105 House and 35 Senate districts.

• Alabama aimed for:

  • Compactness.

  • Avoiding splitting counties or precincts.

  • Minimizing change.

  • Protecting incumbents.

  • Minimizing deviation from equal population (less than 1%).

  • Avoiding retrogression regarding racial minorities' ability to elect their preferred candidates under §5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ($52 U. S. C. §10304(b)$) by maintaining similar black population percentages in majority-minority districts.

• Appellants (Alabama Legislative Black Caucus, Alabama Democratic Conference, etc.) claimed Alabama created a “racial gerrymander” violating the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.

• The District Court ruled for the State, stating electoral districting violates the Equal Protection Clause when race is the “predominant” consideration (Miller v. Johnson, $515 U. S. 900, 913, 916$) and is not “narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest” (Shaw v. Hunt, $517 U. S. 899, 902$).

• The District Court made four determinations:

  • Appellants argued the Acts as a whole were racial gerrymanders, and the Conference argued specific Senate districts (7, 11, 22, 26) were racially gerrymandered.

  • The Conference lacked standing to make racial gerrymandering claims.

  • Race was not the predominant motivating factor in redistricting decisions.

  • If race was predominant, it was “narrowly tailored” to serve a “compelling state interest” in avoiding retrogression under §5.

Held:

1. The District Court's analysis of the racial gerrymandering claim as referring to the State “as a whole,” rather than district-by-district, was legally erroneous.

   • A claim of racial gerrymandering concerns the improper use of race in drawing boundaries of specific electoral districts (Shaw v. Reno, $509 U. S. 630, 649$; Miller, supra, at 916).

   • The Court's district-specific language makes sense considering the harms that underlie a racial gerrymandering claim, see Bush v. Vera, $517 U. S. 952, 957$; Shaw I, supra, at 648.

   • Showing that race-based criteria did not affect some districts would not defeat a claim that race-based criteria predominantly affected other districts.

   • The District Court must consider racial gerrymandering with respect to individual districts challenged by appellants on remand.

   • The Caucus and the Conference did not waive the right to further consideration of a district-by-district analysis.

   • Plaintiffs’ evidence and arguments embody the claim that individual majority-minority districts were racially gerrymandered.

   • Using statewide evidence does not transform a claim about individual districts into a general claim that the legislature racially gerrymandered the State “as” an undifferentiated “whole.”

2. The District Court erred in deciding, sua sponte, that the Conference lacked standing.

   • The District Court believed that the record did not clearly identify the districts in which the individual members of the Conference reside.

   • The Conference's post-trial brief and the testimony of a Conference representative support an inference that the organization has members in all of the majority-minority districts, which is sufficient to meet the Conference’s burden of establishing standing.

   • The Conference reasonably believed that, in the absence of a state challenge or a court request for more detailed information, it need not provide additional information such as a specific membership list.

   • Elementary principles of procedural fairness required the District Court to give the Conference an opportunity to provide evidence of member residence.

   • On remand, the District Court should permit the Conference to file its membership list and the State to respond, as appropriate.

3. The District Court did not properly calculate “predominance” in its alternative holding that “[r]ace was not the predominant motivating factor” in the creation of any of the challenged districts.

   • The District Court placed in the balance legislative efforts to create districts of approximately equal population. However, an equal population goal is not one of the “traditional” factors to be weighed against the use of race to determine whether race “predominates,” see Miller, supra, at 916.

   • Rather, it is part of the redistricting background and taken as a given.

   • Had the District Court not taken a contrary view of the law, its predominance conclusions might well have been different. For example, there is strong evidence that race did predominate as a factor when the legislature drew the boundaries of Senate District 26.

4. The District Court’s final alternative holding—that “the [challenged] Districts would satisfy strict scrutiny”—rests upon a misperception of the law.

   • Section 5 does not require a covered jurisdiction to maintain a particular numerical minority percentage.

   • It requires the jurisdiction to maintain a minority’s ability to elect a preferred candidate of choice.

   • The statute’s language, $52 U. S. C. §§10304(b), (d)$, and Department of Justice Guidelines make clear that §5 is satisfied if minority voters retain the ability to elect their preferred candidates.

   • The history of §5 further supports this view, as Congress adopted the language in §5 to reject this Court’s decision in Georgia v. Ashcroft, $539 U. S. 461$, and to accept the views of Justice Souter’s dissent.

   • Courts should ask whether a new voting provision would likely deprive minority voters of their ability to elect a candidate of their choice, and that courts should not mechanically rely upon numerical percentages but should take account of all significant circumstances, id., at 493, 498, 505, 509.

   • The District Court and the legislature relied heavily upon a mechanically numerical view as to what counts as forbidden retrogression.

   • The Court does not insist that a state legislature, when redistricting, determine precisely what percent minority population §5 demands.

   • A court’s analysis of the narrow tailoring requirement insists only that the legislature have a “strong basis in evidence” in support of the (race-based) choice that it has made.

   • The District Court and the legislature both asked the wrong question with respect to narrow tailoring.

   • They asked how to maintain the present minority percentages in majority-minority districts, instead of asking the extent to which they must preserve existing minority percentages in order to maintain the minority’s present ability to elect the candidate of its choice.

• The judgment is vacated and remanded.

• JUSTICE BREYER delivered the opinion of the Court, in which KENNEDY, GINSBURG, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., joined.

• JUSTICE SCALIA filed a dissenting opinion, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and THOMAS and ALITO, JJ., joined.

• JUSTICE THOMAS filed a dissenting opinion.