Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-1257_g204.pdf
Page Number: 78.0

34 

BRNOVICH v. DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

at a startling rate.  Maricopa County (recall, Arizona’s larg-
est by far) changed 40% or more of polling places before both 
the  2008  and the  2012 elections.    See  329  F. Supp.  3d,  at 
858 (noting also that changes “continued to occur in 2016”).  
In 2012 (the election with the best data), voters affected by 
those changes had an out-of-precinct voting rate that was 
40% higher than other voters did.  See ibid.  And, critically, 
Maricopa’s relocations hit minority voters harder than oth-
ers.  In 2012, the county moved polling stations in African 
American  and  Hispanic  neighborhoods  30%  more  often 
than in white ones.  See App. 110–111.  The odds of those 
changes leading to mistakes increased yet further because 
the affected areas are home to citizens with relatively low 
education and income levels.  See id., at 170–171.  And even 
putting  relocations  aside,  the  siting  of  polling  stations  in 
minority  areas  caused  significant  out-of-precinct  voting.  
Hispanic and Native American voters had to travel further 
than white voters did to their assigned polling places.  See 
id., at 109.  And all minority voters were disproportionately 
likely to be assigned to polling places other than the ones 
closest to where they lived.  See id., at 109, and n. 30, 175–
176.  Small wonder, given such siting decisions, that minor-
ity voters found it harder to identify and get to their correct 
precincts.    But  the  majority  does  not  address  these  mat-
ters.11 

—————— 

11 The majority’s excuse for failing to consider the plaintiffs’ evidence 
on Arizona’s siting of polling places is that the plaintiffs did not bring a 
separate  claim  against  those  practices.    See  ante,  at  30, n. 18.   If  that 
sounds  odd,  it  is.    The  majority  does  not  contest  that  the  evidence  on 
polling-place siting is relevant to the plaintiffs’ challenge to the out-of-
precinct policy.  Nor could the majority do so.  The siting practices are 
one of the background conditions against which the out-of-precinct policy 
operates—exactly the kind of thing that a totality-of-circumstances anal-
ysis demands a court take into account.  To refuse to think about those 
practices because the plaintiffs might have brought a freestanding claim 
against them is to impose an out-of-thin-air pleading requirement that