Court Error – Congressional and State Legislative Districts

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United States Supreme Court

Case Name: Abbott, Governor of Texas, et al. v. Perez, et al.

Case No.: 17-586

Focus: Court Error – Congressional and State Legislative Districts

Before us for review are orders of a three-judge court in the Western District of Texas effectively directing the State not to conduct this year’s elections using districting plans that the court itself adopted some years earlier. The court developed those plans for use in the 2012 elections pursuant to our directions in Perry v. Perez, 565 U. S. 388 (2012) (per curiam). We instructed the three-judge court to start with the plans adopted by the Texas Legislature in 2011 but to make adjustments as required by the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act. Id., at 392–396. After those plans were used in 2012, the Texas Legislature enacted them (with only minor modifications) in 2013, and the plans were used again in both 2014 and 2016.

Last year, however, the three-judge court reversed its prior analysis and held that some of the districts in those plans are unlawful. After reviewing the repealed 2011 plans, which had never been used, the court found that they were tainted by discriminatory intent and that the 2013 Legislature had not “cured” that “taint.”

We now hold that the three-judge court committed a fundamental legal error. It was the challengers’ burden to show that the 2013 Legislature acted with discriminatory intent when it enacted plans that the court itself had produced. The 2013 Legislature was not obligated to show that it had “cured” the unlawful intent that the court attributed to the 2011 Legislature. Thus, the essential pillar of the three-judge court’s reasoning was critically flawed.

When the congressional and state legislative districts are reviewed under the proper legal standards, all but one of them, we conclude, are lawful.

Reversed and Remanded in part. Affirmed in part.

Dissenting: SOTOMAYOR, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which GINSBURG, BREYER, and KAGAN, JJ., joined.

Concurring: THOMAS, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which GORSUCH, J., joined.

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.