Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1086_1co6.pdf
Page Number: 35.0

28 

ALLEN v. MILLIGAN 

Opinion of the Court 

the maps they produce yield different benchmark results?  
How are courts to decide? 
  Alabama  does  not  say;  it  offers  no  rule  or  standard  for 
determining which of these choices are better than others.  
Nothing in §2 provides an answer either.  In 1982, the com-
puterized  mapmaking  software  that  Alabama  contends 
plaintiffs must use to demonstrate an (unspecified) level of 
deviation did not even exist.  See, e.g., J. Chen & N. Steph-
anopoulos,  The  Race-Blind  Future  of  Voting  Rights,  130 
Yale  L. J.  862,  881–882  (2021)  (Chen  &  Stephanopoulos).  
And neither the text of §2 nor the fraught debate that pro-
duced  it  suggests  that  “equal  access”  to  the  fundamental 
right of voting turns on computer simulations that are tech-
nically complicated, expensive to produce, and available to 
“[o]nly a small cadre of university researchers [that] have 
the resources and expertise to run” them.  Brief for United 
States as Amicus Curiae 28 (citing Chen & Stephanopoulos 
882–884).8 
  One  final  point  bears  mentioning.    Throughout  these 
cases, Alabama has repeatedly emphasized that HB1 can-
not have violated §2 because none of plaintiffs’ two million 
odd maps contained more than one majority-minority dis-
trict.  See, e.g., Brief for Alabama 1, 23, 30, 31, 54–56, 70, 
79.  The point is that two million is a very big number and 
that  sheer  volume  matters.    But  as  elsewhere,  Alabama 
misconceives the math project that it expects courts to over-
see.  A brief submitted by three computational redistricting 
experts  explains  that  the  number  of  possible  districting 
maps in Alabama is at least in the “trillion trillions.”  Re-
districting  Brief  6,  n. 7.    Another  publication  reports  that 

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8 None of this is to suggest that algorithmic mapmaking is categorically 
irrelevant in voting rights cases.  Instead, we note only that, in light of 
the  difficulties  discussed  above,  courts  should  exercise  caution  before 
treating  results  produced  by  algorithms  as  all  but  dispositive  of  a  §2 
claim.    And  in  evaluating  algorithmic  evidence  more  generally  in  this 
context, courts should be attentive to the concerns we have discussed.