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Bethune-Hill v. Virginia Board of Elections

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See also: Redistricting in Virginia


Supreme Court of the United States
Bethune-Hill v. Virginia Board of Elections
Reference: 15-680
Issue: Voting rights
Term: 2016
Important Dates
Argued: December 5, 2016
Decided: March 1, 2017
Outcome
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded
Vote
8-0 to vacate and remand, 7-1 to affirm
Majority
Chief Justice John G. Roberts • Anthony Kennedy • Clarence Thomas • Ruth Bader Ginsburg • Stephen Breyer • Samuel Alito • Sonia Sotomayor • Elena Kagan
Concurring
Alito, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment
Thomas, concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part
Dissenting
Thomas, concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part


Bethune-Hill v. Virginia Board of Elections is a case that was argued during the October 2016 term of the U.S. Supreme Court. As a result of the court's ruling, one challenged district, Virginia House District 75, was upheld by the court as constructed. Challenges to the other 11 districts, however, were returned for additional proceedings in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Argument in the case was held on December 5, 2016. The case came to the court after the court noted probable jurisdiction. Under 28 U.S.C. §2284, challenges to the constitutionality of congressional districts are heard by three-judge district courts, with a right of direct appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. The judgment under review was from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. On March 1, 2017, in an opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed part of the district court's judgment, vacated part of the district court's judgment, and remanded the case to the district court for additional proceedings.

HIGHLIGHTS
  • The case: A class of voters in Virginia challenged a proposed state legislative redistricting plan for 12 districts. The petitioners claimed the proposed district maps are illegal racial gerrymanders in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause and Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
  • The issue: Did a three-judge panel of the Eastern District of Virginia commit legal error in upholding the proposed district scheme?
  • The outcome: On March 1, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed part of the district court's judgment, vacated part of the district court's judgment, and remanded the case to the district court for additional proceedings.


    • For more, see Redistricting in Virginia


    In brief: In March 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama that "'the prioritiz[ation] [of] mechanical racial targets above all other districting criteria,'" was "untethered to any 'strong basis in evidence' for sorting voters on the basis of race." In so doing, the court struck a proposed scheme of state legislative districts as having created racially gerrymandered districts in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause and Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Bethune-Hill challenges 12 legislative districts drawn by the Virginia House of Delegates, arguing that these districts constitute illegal racial gerrymanders in violation of the same provisions of the Constitution and of statute as in the Alabama case because the Virginia legislature's decision that those districts be drawn with a minimum of 55 percent minority voting age population unconstitutionally relied on race as a "predominant factor" for district design. A three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, in a 2-1 decision, upheld the proposed district scheme. Oral argument in the case was held on December 5, 2016. On March 1, 2017, in an opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed part of the district court's judgment, vacated part of the district court's judgment, and remanded the case to the district court for additional proceedings.

    You can review the Eastern District of Virginia's opinion here.[1]

    Click on the tabs below to learn more about this Supreme Court case.

    Case

    Background

    After the 2010 census, the Virginia General Assembly redrew the legislative districts for both the Virginia House of Delegates and the Virginia State Senate. Virginia is a covered jurisdiction under the Voting Rights Act (VRA). This requires Virginia to submit its redistricting plans to the U.S. Department of Justice for preclearance. As a requirement of the Act, it was necessary for Virginia to show that the proposed redistricting plan "did not result 'in a retrogression in the position of racial minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral function.'" In an effort to comply with this directive, the legislature created 12 majority-minority districts for the Virginia House. A majority-minority district is one in which a majority of the district's residents of voting age are non-Hispanic Caucasians. Based in part on the provisions of the prior redistricting plan from 2001, "several legislators believed that the twelve 'ability-to-elect' districts ... needed to contain a BVAP of at least 55% ... to avoid 'unwarranted retrogression' under Section 5 of the VRA." BVAP is an acronym meaning "black voting age population." The U.S. Department of Justice precleared the plan on June 17, 2011, and the first elections under the new redistricting plan were held on November 8, 2011.[1][2]

    On December 22, 2014, a voter from each of the 12 districts filed a complaint in federal district court arguing that the districts were racial gerrymanders in violation of both the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause and of the Voting Rights Act. A bench trial before a three-judge panel from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia was held in July 2015.

    Did race predominate in crafting the districts?

    In an effort to examine whether or not the plan complied with the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the district court noted that "the legislature must not allow racial considerations to predominate over (i.e. to subordinate) traditional redistricting criteria ... If a court so finds, then the court applies strict scrutiny. Second, the court examines whether the legislature has a strong basis in evidence for believing federal law required its use of race." [1]

    In its predominance analysis, the court first reviewed the districts on the basis of their compliance with traditional, neutral districting criteria. These criteria included political subdivision (e.g. cities and towns) and geographic boundaries, compactness, contiguity, and the practice of putting two or more districts of the lower chamber of the state legislature wholly within each district of the upper chamber, which is also known as nesting. The court then examined the districts to determine if any aspect constituted a deviation from the criteria under review. Finally, the court weighed the totality of the evidence to determine whether considerations based on race predominated all other criteria. After evaluating each of the twelve districts to determine if race predominated, the court held that for only one district, House District 75, did the plaintiffs meet their burden in proving that voters were sorted into that district predominantly on the basis of race.[1]

    Strict scrutiny analysis

    Because the court determined that House District 75 was drawn in a manner in which race subordinated all other criteria for redistricting, the court applied a legal standard known as strict scrutiny to the legislation creating the district's new boundaries. "To survive strict scrutiny, the redistricting statute must be narrowly tailored to a compelling state interest." The court held that Virginia's goals of complying with federal antidiscrimination laws and with the preclearance provisions of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act were compelling state interests.[1]

    In order to assess whether the statute was narrowly tailored, "the question ... is whether the legislature ... had a strong basis in evidence for believing ... that its actions were reasonably necessary to achieve actual compliance with federal antidiscrimination standards based on a constitutional reading of those standards. Or, could a reasonable legislator have come to the conclusion that the challenged district violated neither federal law nor any constitutional limitations upon that federal law."[1]

    In analyzing the "strong basis in evidence" standard, the court explained,[1]

    “

    once a court finds that race predominated, the strong basis in evidence standard asks not only whether the legislature had good reasons for believing the BVAP percentage employed in the district - as well as the district itself - was necessary to avoid retrogression, but also whether the district is one that a reasonable legislator could believe generally respected neutral districting principles. [3]

    		”

    In assessing House District 75, and based in part on the good reasons put forward by the legislature for the 55 percent BVAP threshold and the belief that the threshold was necessary to ensure that minority voting influence did not retrogress, the court held the legislature "had good reason to believe that maintaining a 55% BVAP level in HD 75 was necessary to prevent actual retrogression (and not just to attain preclearance), and that this was achieved by reasonable deviations from traditional redistricting criteria." Thus, for House District 75, the court found that the state satisfied the requirement for a strong basis in evidence in order to prove narrow tailoring and, therefore, satisfy strict scrutiny.[1]

    Petitioners' challenge

    The petitioners are challenging the district panel's legal assessment of racial predominance for 11 of the 12 districts, as well as the panel's strict scrutiny analysis of House District 75.

    Jurisdiction noted

    On June 6, 2016, the Supreme Court of the United States noted probable jurisdiction over a decision of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The Supreme Court will review several questions when the court hears oral argument on the case. Oral argument was held on December 5, 2016.

    Arguments


    Questions presented

    Questions presented:
    • 1. Did the court below err in holding that race cannot predominate even where it is the most important consideration in drawing a given district unless the use of race results in "actual conflict" with traditional districting criteria?
    • 2. Did the court below err by concluding that the admitted use of a one-size-fits-all 55% black voting age population floor to draw twelve separate House of Delegates districts does not amount to racial predominance and trigger strict scrutiny?
    • 3. Did the court below err in disregarding the admitted use of race in drawing district lines in favor of examining circumstantial evidence regarding the contours of the districts?
    • 4. Did the court below err in holding that racial goals must negate all other districting criteria in order for race to predominate?
    • 5. Did the court below err in concluding that the General Assembly's predominant use of race in drawing House District 75 was narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest?

    [4]


    Audio

    • Audio of oral argument:[5]



    Transcript

    • Transcript of oral argument:[6]

    Outcome

    Decision

    In a decision announcing the judgment of the court and joined by five other justices in full, the Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the Eastern District of Virginia in part, vacated the decision in part, and remanded the case for additional proceedings. As a result of the court's ruling, one challenged district, District 75, was upheld by the court as constructed. Challenges to the other 11 challenged districts, however, were returned for additional proceedings in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Justice Anthony Kennedy delivered the opinion of the court. Justice Samuel Alito authored an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. Justice Clarence Thomas authored an opinion concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part.[7]

    Opinion

    Justice Anthony Kennedy delivered the opinion for the court. In this case, the Supreme Court affirmed a portion of the judgment of the district court in which the district court held that race did predominate in the Virginia legislature's construction of one of the 12 districts under review, Virginia House District 75, but that this construction satisfied a legal test known as strict scrutiny; that is, the district's construction was narrowly tailored to advance a compelling state interest. The Supreme Court, however, vacated that portion of the district court's judgment pertaining to the remaining 11 districts under review because the district court misapplied the correct standard to establish unconstitutional racial predominance in legislative districting. The Supreme Court remanded the case to the district court for additional proceedings on petitioners' racial predominance claims in the other 11 districts.

    Issues presented

    After a recitation of the underlying facts in the case, Justice Kennedy presented the standard that plaintiffs must meet to prove that an election district violates the Equal Protection Clause.[7]

    “

    The Equal Protection Clause prohibits a State, without sufficient justification, from 'separat[ing] its citizens into different voting districts on the basis of race.' ... this Court has held that a plaintiff alleging racial gerrymandering bears the burden 'to show, either through circumstantial evidence of a district’s shape and demographics or more direct evidence going to legislative purpose, that race was the predominant factor motivating the legislature’s decision to place a significant number of voters within or without a particular district.' Miller, 515 U. S. at 916. To satisfy this burden, the plaintiff 'must prove that the legislature subordinated traditional race-neutral districting principles ... to racial considerations.' [3]

    		”

    The petitioners in this case alleged that the district court misapplied the Supreme Court's relevant precedents when the district court required the petitioners to demonstrate an actual conflict between Virginia's proposed plan and traditional redistricting principles, which is a necessary prerequisite to establishing race as the predominant factor underlying a legislature's redistricting proposals. The petitioners further alleged that the district court committed legal error when that court "considered the legislature's racial motive only to the extent that the challengers identified deviations from traditional redistricting criteria that were attributable to race and not to some other factor ... this approach foreclosed a holistic analysis of each district."[7]

    With respect to these arguments, the court agreed with the petitioners. Justice Kennedy asserted that the district court did not apply the correct standard for a racial predominance inquiry, holding that

    “

    a conflict or inconsistency between the enacted plan and traditional redistricting criteria is not a threshold requirement or a mandatory precondition in order for a challenger to establish a claim of racial gerrymandering. Of course, a conflict or inconsistency may be persuasive circumstantial evidence tending to show racial predomination, but there is no rule requiring challengers to present this kind of evidence in every case ... The ultimate object of the inquiry ... is the legislature’s predominant motive for the design of the district as a whole. A court faced with a racial gerrymandering claim therefore must consider all of the lines of the district at issue; any explanation for a particular portion of the lines, moreover, must take account of the districtwide context. Concentrating on particular portions in isolation may obscure the significance of relevant districtwide evidence, such as stark splits in the racial composition of populations moved into and out of disparate parts of the district, or the use of an express racial target. A holistic analysis is necessary to give that kind of evidence its proper weight. [3]

    		”

    The petitioners requested that the Supreme Court not only to correct the standard for racial predominance used by the district court, but to also apply that standard to the 11 legislative districts in which the district court found race did not predominate. The court declined to do so, citing the district court as the proper venue in which to adjudicate these claims in the first instance on remand. The court vacated the judgment of the district court pertaining to these 11 districts and remanded the case back to that court for additional proceedings under the appropriate standard for adjudicating racial predominance claims.[7]

    District 75

    The district court identified one legislative district, Virginia House District 75, as having been drawn using race as a predominant factor. Accordingly, the state board of elections was required to show that the legislative districting was narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest, a legal standard known as strict scrutiny. The district court was satisfied that the state's asserted interest—compliance with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act—constituted a compelling government interest, a point which the petitioners conceded both at trial and on appeal. The petitioners challenged that the district was narrowly tailored to meet that objective.[7]

    With respect to the narrow tailoring argument, Justice Kennedy said that "when a State justifies the predominant use of race in redistricting on the basis of the need to comply with the Voting Rights Act, '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 requisite strong basis in evidence exists when the legislature has 'good reasons to believe' it must use race in order to satisfy the Voting Rights Act, 'even if a court does not find that the actions were necessary for statutory compliance.'" In evaluating the analysis performed by the Virginia legislature in constructing District 75, the court held that the Virginia legislature's use of, and reliance on, a 55% black voting age population requirement in the district "was necessary for black voters to have a functional working majority." Based on this, the Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the district court as applied to District 75.[7]

    Concurring opinions

    Justice Samuel Alito authored an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. Justice Alito announced that he would join the court's opinion insofar as the court upheld the constitutionality of District 75 and that he concurred in the judgment of the court insofar as the court vacated and remanded the district court's opinion pertaining to the other 11 districts. Justice Alito, however, wrote that he would subject each of the 11 other districts to strict scrutiny as the district court did with District 75.[7]

    Justice Clarence Thomas authored an opinion concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part. Justice Thomas wrote that he would reverse the district court as to all 12 districts; therefore, he agreed with the court's decision to vacate and remand the district court's opinion with respect to 11 of the 12 districts. Justice Thomas, however, dissented from the Supreme Court's opinion with respect to District 75. In Justice Thomas' view, District 75 failed to meet strict scrutiny because the state legislature failed to assert a compelling state interest and did not narrowly tailor the use of race in its drawing of District 75. Justice Thomas noted that, in his view, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional, so he rejected the legislature's reliance on that provision as evidence of a compelling government interest. He also rejected the Supreme Court's standards for what constitutes narrow tailoring. In Justice Thomas' words,[7]

    “

    I have serious doubts about the Court’s standard for narrow tailoring, as characterized today and in Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama, 575 U. S. ___ (2015). Relying on Alabama, the majority explains that narrow tailoring in the redistricting context requires 'only that the legislature have a strong basis in evidence in support of the (race-based) choice that it has made.' ... That standard 'does not demand that a State’s actions actually be necessary to achieve a compelling state interest in order to be constitutionally valid.' Alabama, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 22) ... Instead, under that standard, a state legislature needs only 'good reasons to believe' that the use of race is required, even if the use of race is not 'actually . . . necessary.' Alabama, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 22) ... That approach to narrow tailoring — deferring to a State’s belief that it has good reasons to use race — is 'strict' in name only. [3]

    		”


    The opinion

    Filings

    The court noted probable jurisdiction on June 6, 2016.

    Merits filings

    Parties' filings

    • Golden Bethune-Hill et al., the petitioners, filed a merits brief on September 7, 2016.
    • The Virginia Board of Elections, the respondents, filed a merits brief on October 17, 2016.
    • Bethune-Hill et al. filed a reply brief on the merits on November 16, 2016.

    Amicus curiae filings

    The following groups have filed amicus curiae briefs in support of the petitioners, Golden Bethune-Hill et al.

    • Brief of the Campaign Legal Center
    • Brief of the Constitutional Accountability Center
    • Brief of OneVirginia2021: Virginians for Fair Redistricting

    The following group filed an amicus curiae brief in support of neither party.

    • Brief of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

    The following group filed an amicus curiae brief urging the court to affirm in part and vacate in part.

    • Brief of the United States of America

    The following groups filed amicus curiae briefs in support of the respondents, the Virginia Board of Elections.

    • Brief of the National Black Chamber of Commerce and the Hispanic Leadership Fund
    • Brief of political scientists Thomas Brunell et al.
    • Brief of the Southeastern Legal Foundation and the Center for Equal Opportunity

    Jurisdictional filings

    Parties' filings

    • Bethune-Hill et al. filed a reply on December 30, 2015.


    See also

    Footnotes

    1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Golden Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Board of Elections et al., decided October 22, 2015
    2. ↑ In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Shelby County v. Holder that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which required preclearance for covered jurisdictions, was unconstitutional.
    3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
    4. ↑ Supreme Court of the United States, Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Board of Elections, June 6, 2016
    5. ↑ Supreme Court of the United States, Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Board of Elections, argued December 5, 2016
    6. ↑ Supreme Court of the United States, Bethune-Hill v. Va. Board of Elections, argued December 5, 2016
    7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 Supreme Court of the United States, Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Board of Elections, March 1, 2017
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