SCOTUS to hear major redistricting cases

See also: Major cases of the Supreme Court October 2015 term and Evenwel v. Abbott

Evenwel v. Abbott
Docket number: 14-940
Court: United States Supreme Court
Court membership
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Associate Justices Antonin Scalia Anthony Kennedy • Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg • Steven G. Breyer Samuel Alito • Sonia Sotomayor • Elena Kagan

Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission
Docket number: 14-232
Court: United States Supreme Court
Court membership
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Associate Justices Antonin Scalia Anthony Kennedy • Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg • Steven G. Breyer Samuel Alito • Sonia Sotomayor • Elena Kagan

December 7, 2015

By Kelly Coyle

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear arguments on two major redistricting cases, one of which "may wind up being the most important voting case in sixty years," according to Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, former federal election commissioner, and former counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Von Spakovsky was referring to Evenwel v. Abbott. The other case the court will hear is Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission. Both cases address the "one person, one vote" principle established in the 1964 case Reynolds v. Sims, in which the court held that "The Equal Protection Clause requires substantially equal legislative representation for all citizens in a State regardless of where they reside." The court did not decide whether legislative districts should have the same number of people, the same number of registered voters or some other metric to meet the "one person, one vote" requirement.

Richard Pildes, a law professor at New York University, said that there was "something odd about the principle of political equality that’s reflected in the 'one person, one vote' standard being so ill-defined. ...Few constitutional standards work that way." The court may offer a solution to this principle in one or both of these cases.

In Evenwel v. Abbott, Texas citizens and petitioners Sue Evenwel and Edward Pfenninger are challenging the state senate map drawn by the 2013 Texas State Legislature. They are arguing that the map, "while roughly equal in terms of total population, grossly malapportioned voters." They are also arguing that district populations should take into account only the number of registered or eligible voters residing within those districts.

Currently, total population counts are used for redistricting purposes. The court will address "whether the 'one-person, one-vote' principle of the Fourteenth Amendment creates a judicially enforceable right ensuring that the districting process does not deny voters an equal vote."

Question presented in Evenwel v. Abbott: "whether the 'one-person, one-vote' principle of the Fourteenth Amendment creates a judicially enforceable right ensuring that the districting process does not deny voters an equal vote."

In Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, a group of Republican voters from Arizona claim that their votes have been diluted by the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (AIRC) in order to give the Democratic Party an advantage, which they say is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In 2012, the AIRC created legislative districts that overpopulated 16 Republican districts and underpopulated 11 Democratic districts.

The AIRC "argued that the population deviations were the result of attempts to comply with the Voting Rights Act" and get approval from the U.S. Department of Justice, according to Oyez.org. The petitioners argue that this rationale for unequally populating legislative districts is wrong because neither the Voting Rights Act nor the Justice Department requires or has the authority to allow the commission to violate the "one person, one vote" principle.

The court limited the argument to the following questions in Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission: "Does the desire to gain partisan advantage for one political party justify intentionally creating over-populated legislative districts that result in tens of thousands of individual voters being denied Equal Protection because their individual votes are devalued, violating the one-person, one-vote principle?" "Does the desire to obtain favorable preclearance review by the Justice Department permit the creation of legislative districts that deviate from the one-person, one-vote principle? And, even if creating unequal districts to obtain preclearance approval was once justified, is this still a legitimate justification after Shelby County v. Holder, 133 S.Ct. 2612 (2013)?"

See also

• Supreme Court of the United States
• History of the Supreme Court
• Major cases of the Supreme Court October 2015 term
• Supreme Court cases, October term 2015
• Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission

External links

• SupremeCourt.gov
• American Bar Association, 2015-2016 Supreme Court Briefs