Source: https://moderndemocracyblog.com/category/rights/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 17:07:29+00:00

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As election returns rolled in last week, citizens in Democratic and Republican strongholds alike voted overwhelmingly to take power back into their own hands. From voting-rights restoration for 1.4 million returning citizens in Florida and Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) in Nevada to redistricting reform in Michigan, Missouri, Colorado, and Utah, the night was full of impressive democracy-enhancing victories.
These gains were only possible thanks to incredible dedication and activism between the 2016 and 2018 elections. And, as the dust settles on 2018, it’s time to turn to 2020. For states with popular initiatives, that means expanding AVR, implementing early voting and no-excuse absentee voting, or following Maine’s lead and adopting ranked-choice voting.
Yet, improving our elections should not be the work of the voters alone. As more and more elected officials owe their office to such reforms, they too can help unrig the systems that keep our politics unaccountable. And, for candidates who can only win in wave years, the first order of business must be tearing down the barriers that make our elections unresponsive in all other years. Newly elected leaders have an opportunity to make voting more accessible and representative before 2020 arrives—they must not pass it up.
For newly elected governors, state senators, and state representatives, this means making registration easier (through AVR, online registration, and/or same-day registration), making voting more convenient (through expanding early voting, absentee/mail-in voting, and/or creating state holidays for voting), making voting more representative (through ranked-choice voting, redistricting reform, and/or fair representation voting), and expanding the franchise.
These kinds of structural changes are less likely to roll back after the next election because they alter the power (and the pool) of the voters making the decisions, thereby changing the incentives of those running and those elected. Putting these reforms at the top of the agenda—and insisting on them before moving forward—can also impact how newly elected officials of all stripes approach the rest of their legislative term. If state officials know that their work will be judged by a broader and more representative electorate in two years’ time, they might be more responsive in the interim.
In states where these reforms are already in place due to citizen initiative, legislators should take steps to enhance and protect those reforms by reenactment and expansion. This explicit legislative action may help defend them against challenge if the Supreme Court decides to revisit its 2015 decision in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission. As Rick Hasen points out in a recent Harvard Law Review Blog post, Chief Justice Roberts “wrote a blistering dissent for the four conservative Justices arguing that only state legislatures can set the rules” for congressional elections under Article I of the U.S. Constitution. With Kennedy replaced by Kavanaugh, it may be that the Court’s fickle feelings about stare decisis are now all that stand in the way of a massive rollback in recent initiative-driven gains. By shoring up these reforms through legislative action, state representatives can help lock in these democratic advances, protect them against judicial challenge, and position themselves as defenders of the popular will ahead of their next election.
There may also be room for compromise on redistricting reform in a number of states with split governments. Maryland and Massachusetts, for example, continue to have Democratic legislatures and Republican governors, whereas Virginia and Wisconsin have Republican legislatures and Democratic governors. With a new round of redistricting approaching (and roughly equal numbers of congressional representatives in each state), perhaps there’s more of an incentive now to “make a disarmament deal” than in prior years, with each state conditioning redistricting reform on a sister state enacting the same.
Each of these steps would improve the state of our democracy significantly and set the stage for elections in 2020 based on a much more representative electorate.
Automatic National Voter Registration: Those who are eligible to vote should be able to vote, and those who are ineligible to vote should be kept off the registration rolls—these basic principles have widespread public support. A national system that automatically registers voters for federal elections as soon as they become eligible and that assigns a national identification number to each voter would address both of these concerns. The United States has terrible turnout numbers, but much of this may be attributable to the registration barrier: our turnout of registered voters appears to be among the best in the world.
Voting Rights Act Restoration: If it feels like voting has become far more difficult over the past few years, you’re not wrong. Before 2013, states and localities with a history of discriminatory voting practices could not alter their voting rules without getting prior permission (or “preclearance”) from a federal court or from the Department of Justice. In 2013, the Supreme Court held that the list of jurisdictions subject to preclearance was outdated and struck this part of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) down. Numerous new voting restrictions soon followed. Congress used to reauthorize the VRA with broad bipartisan support, and it should do so again this session by enacting the Voting Rights Advancement Act (legislation that requires preclearance for any state with a record of voting-rights violations in the last 25 years).
End Gerrymandering with the Fair Representation Act: Independent redistricting commissions enjoy widespread support across the partisan divide and should be required for the creation of all congressional districts. But Congress should not stop there—it should pass the Fair Representation Act (FRA). The FRA uses ranked-choice voting and multi-member districts to ensure that every vote matters. Independent commissions can help make lines fairer, but single-member districts mean even the “fairest” lines will still write off those voters in the minority of each district. In our increasingly polarized politics, we could stand to have a House of Representatives with Massachusetts Republicans, Arkansas Democrats, and perhaps even some third-party Members of Congress—voices that our current system shuts out.
Election Administration: No one should have to wait hours to vote, face malfunctioning equipment, or fear that vote tallies have been manipulated. Back in 2014, a bipartisan commission proposed a number of reforms to improve polling place resource allocation, expand opportunities to vote before election day, and provide regular audits of voting equipment. These suggestions are still relevant today. Congress should provide funding to update and improve our electoral machinery and processes.
With forceful action at the start of the next session, Congress could put our democracy on a safer and more sustainable path, leveraging the progress of the last step forward in order to make the next step possible. But these reforms must be first on the legislative agenda if they’re to make any difference in time for the 2020 elections. Democrats and Republicans alike should take a lesson from the voters: some things are beyond the partisan divide. Free and fair elections ought to be one of them.
 Maryland and Massachusetts may be less inclined to engage in this exchange given their Democratic supermajorities, but given the slightly higher number of Republican representatives at stake (and the recent federal court ruling against Maryland’s gerrymander) perhaps there is still incentive to make a trade.
In 2004, Justice Scalia led a plurality in Vieth v. Jubelirer that attempted to affirmatively hold partisan gerrymandering claims to be “non-justiciable” due to the (supposed) lack of “manageable standards” for adjudicating such claims. The late Justice, however, failed to convince a key fifth vote: Justice Kennedy. Kennedy wanted to hold out hope rather than definitively and permanently closing the door to the possibility of a future claim.
Chief Justice Roberts’ decision in Gill v. Whitford takes this lesson to heart along with some other wisdom from 2004: the importance of mastering the ability to dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge. Although the Gill decision purports to leave a path open to litigants and avoid the question of justiciability, Slip Op. 13, the Chief may have recognized that if he can dodge the claim long enough, it will perish all the same. Providing an endless or impossible path has the same effect on litigants as providing no path at all, and yet it allows Kennedy to remain a champion—right through to retirement.
In the majority opinion, Roberts clothes classic manageability arguments in the language of Article III standing and the constitutional limits of federal judicial power (a not-so-subtle nod to one of Kennedy’s core concerns). For example, Roberts frames both symmetry and the concept of vote dilution itself as involving “hypothetical” states of affairs, see Slip Op. 12, 16, before going on to emphasize that any “burden on the plaintiffs’ votes [must be] ‘actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical,’” Slip Op. 19. Roberts also emphasizes that the harm must “affect the plaintiff in a personal and individual way,” Slip Op. 13, while discounting the ability of existing partisan affiliation analyses to sufficiently carry that burden, see Slip Op. 20 (arguing that symmetry measures “are an average measure” and “do not address the effect that a gerrymander has on the votes of particular citizens”); Slip Op. 21 (remanding so that “the plaintiffs may have an opportunity to prove concrete and particularized injuries using evidence—unlike the bulk of the evidence presented thus far—that would tend to demonstrate a burden on their individual votes”) (emphasis added).
These formulations seem to demand more than a repackaging of plaintiffs’ existing evidence. Justice Kagan (and I) may believe that the plaintiffs should be able to take their “mass of packing and cracking proof” and “now . . . present [it] in district-by-district form to support their standing,” Kagan Op. 6, but it is worth taking a sober look at which opinions Justice Kennedy did (and did not) join. In the meantime, it is unclear what kinds of evidence would satisfy Roberts’ standing requirement for an individual vote dilution claim—and the fact that it could take years to find out may well be the point.
Yet, an appeal out of North Carolina (that was just set for a conference in the days ahead) may still throw a wrench in the Chief’s plans. Not only did the district court in the North Carolina case hold that the plaintiffs had both statewide and district-by-district standing, see App-40-41, n.9, the North Carolina case also addressed another theory of harm altogether—one grounded in associational rights, see App-37 n.8 (“Plaintiffs in the present case do not merely allege harm stemming from a congressional delegation whose partisan makeup does not reflect that of the state as a whole. Plaintiffs testified to a statewide chilling of association and discourse between Democrats and Republicans—both within each party and across party lines—due to the lack of competitive districts. This drove down voter registration, voter turnout, and cross-party political discussion and compromise. Furthermore, the disfavored political party suffered from statewide decreases in fundraising and candidate recruitment, while at the same time incurring increased statewide costs for voter education and recruitment.”). See also App-39 (“Partisan gerrymandering also implicates additional, non-district-specific First Amendment harms, such as infringing on the right to associate with likeminded voters to fund, attract, and elect candidates of choice.”).
It is perhaps no coincidence that Kagan—leading a group of four Justices—described the potential for a separate, statewide, associational claim in terms seemingly tailored to this separate basis for standing. See Kagan Op. 9 (noting that “Members of the ‘disfavored party’ in [a] State, deprived of their natural political strength by a partisan gerrymander, may face difficulties fundraising, registering voters, attracting volunteers, generating support from independents, and recruiting candidates to run for office”). In short, the Supreme Court may face a test of Justice Kagan’s associational claim theory at the very top of the next Term.
Second, the facts in the North Carolina case are almost too extreme to comprehend. The NC General Assembly’s Joint Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting formally adopted districting criteria that expressly included a provision entitled “Partisan Advantage,” which stated that the Committee “shall make reasonable efforts to construct districts” that result in a congressional delegation of “10 Republicans and 3 Democrats.” When presented with a similar “hypothetical” by Justice Kennedy at oral argument, even the defendants in Gill and Benisek conceded that such a law would be unconstitutional.
Finally, for all of her citations to Kennedy’s opinions, Justice Kagan left out one that might end up being quite significant: Citizens United. The district court in North Carolina repeatedly cited Citizens United as support for its First Amendment holding, arguing, for example, that “partisan gerrymandering runs afoul of the First Amendment’s prohibition on laws that disfavor a particular group or class of speakers.” App-167. Will Justice Kennedy use the North Carolina case as an opportunity to try and frame Citizens United in a new light, perhaps drawing former foes into gritting agreement over some of that case’s broader principles?
The days ahead may offer our best opportunity to gauge whether a judicial remedy is just around the corner, or whether there is no end in sight. If any case can derail the Chief Justice’s new approach to standing in partisan gerrymandering claims, it’s the North Carolina case. Then again, if he can dodge this wrench, he can dodge them all.
While I am decidedly biased, there is a lot to love about Justice Kagan’s proposed approach to the individual vote dilution claim: she notes that “[t]he point is that the plaintiff can show, through drawing alternative district lines, that partisan-based packing or cracking diluted her vote” and that “[t]he precise numbers are of no import,” Kagan Op. 5; she recognizes the distinct concept of “[i]llicit partisan intent—a purpose to dilute [targeted citizens’] votes in drawing district lines,” Kagan Op. 6 (emphasis added); and she draws a parallel to racial gerrymandering case law to point out that statewide evidence “‘is perfectly relevant’ to showing that mapmakers had an invidious ‘motive’ in drawing the lines of ‘multiple districts in the State,’” Kagan Op. 7. This approach offers a clear and coherent way to harmonize political gerrymandering case law with racial gerrymandering case law.
 The Court set another long-pending NC partisan gerrymandering case (16-166) for conference on June 21, 2018 as well. Interestingly, this case also presents an issue raised in this Term’s racial gerrymandering case: when is a court’s order the functional equivalent of an injunction? In 16-166, the NC legislature adopted a politically gerrymandered map as a replacement for the racially gerrymandered map that had been struck down. Plaintiffs raised objections to the remedial map, which the district court rejected. Plaintiffs argued that the district court’s order was the functional equivalent of an injunction and have been waiting on an answer ever since.
Today, the Supreme Court heard argument in Gill v. Whitford. The Court seems as divided as ever, and the ultimate outcome still rests in Justice Kennedy’s unpredictable hands. Yet, oral argument revealed something else: litigants who seem to agree on a key principle and Justices who seem to be revisiting the important parallels between racial and political gerrymandering case law.
As far as predictions go, guessing where Justice Kennedy will land remains difficult, but the conservative bloc on the Court previewed the outline of an opinion that it surely hopes Kennedy will join. Their two key arguments seem tailored to Kennedy: (1) the claim is not sufficiently rooted in the Constitution, and (2) intervention would threaten the Court’s institutional integrity and exceed its constitutional role.
Nonetheless, some interesting areas of consensus arose in the Supreme Court today. As I argue in an essay published today (with many thanks to the team at the Cardozo Law Review de novo), the Court could go a long way towards improving the clarity, coherency, and consistency of its case law (and enhancing the institutional integrity of the courts and state legislatures) by affirming in Gill v. Whitford and reversing in Harris v. Cooper based on some of today’s rare points of agreement.
MS. MURPHY: I think that that would be better thought of probably as an equal protection violation, but you could think of it . . . as a First Amendment violation in the sense that it is viewpoint discrimination against the individuals who the legislation is saying you have to specifically draw the maps in a way to injure.
MR. TSEYTLIN: A facially discriminatory law in a state would violate the First Amendment because it would stigmatize that party.
These concessions matter because they reflect a broad consensus on a key issue underlying many questions raised today. Like the not-so-hypothetical facially partisan redistricting criteria adopted by North Carolina in Harris v. Cooper, Kennedy’s statute doesn’t require any showing of effect to be constitutionally troubling. Rather, by using a facial category, such a law forces states to answer whether partisan advantage is a legitimate government purpose at all.
Both the defendants and intervenors attempted to distinguish their case (and turn the tables back on the Court) by contending that the Court’s opinions say that “there will always be partisan intent” in redistricting. But not only does this mischaracterize the Court’s prior case law, it is not even a coherent response on its own terms: if partisan intent or partisan government purpose is constitutionally legitimate, then the defendants and intervenors should have argued that Justice Kennedy’s hypothetical statute would survive, not fail.
As the district court noted in its opinion, there is a difference between an “intent to act for political purposes” (which the Supreme Court has upheld), and an “intent to make the political system systematically unresponsive to a particular segment of the voters based on their political preference” (which the Supreme Court has not upheld, and which the Court repeatedly condemned in its early redistricting decisions). If one accepts this distinction between types of intent, many of the objections raised today fall away.
Worried about “false positives” from symmetry metrics (from, for example, commission-drawn maps or court-drawn maps)? The absence of invidious partisan intent means that such a claim would fail. The constitutional problem isn’t that any particular voter in any particular district faces poor odds; the constitutional problem arises when a district is designed to give particular voters poor odds.
Worried about the Court’s ability to distinguish between legitimate state interests (such as enhancing competitiveness or pursuing proportionality) and illegitimate state interests (such as maximizing advantage)? Perhaps take a look at racial gerrymandering law, which distinguishes between using race to preserve electoral opportunities (legitimate) and using race to entrench electoral advantages (illegitimate), as Justice Ginsburg reiterated today.
Indeed, in discussing both standing and the merits, the important parallels between racial gerrymandering law and political gerrymandering law were on full display today. Kennedy’s “overriding concern” language seems uncannily similar to the formulation used in racial sorting case law, and Gorsuch’s supposedly troubling “turmeric standard” goes by a more well-known name in constitutional racial dilution cases: the totality of circumstances. This standard—like any spice rub—may vary a bit from batch to batch and set-of-facts to set-of-facts.
Nor would following these routine, black-letter principles of constitutional law threaten to plunge the Court headlong into any kind of institutional crisis. Most of the troubling questions posed today (“Why EG > 7%?”) were premised on the dangers the Court might face under some kind of effects-only standard, which—standing alone—might reasonably seem divorced from the constitutional roots of the violation. By refocusing on the constitutional illegitimacy of partisan voter suppression (as opposed to partisan voter persuasion), the various effects tests set out by the plaintiffs and the court below need not individually carry so much weight in the analysis. As with constitutional racial vote dilution cases, the intent element of a claim is where plaintiffs will often flounder—and it is the causal connection of invidious intent to an otherwise permissible redistricting decision or action that makes the resulting effect unconstitutional.
The objection to all of this is, of course, that most or all politicians try to suppress their opponents when redistricting, and so an intent requirement isn’t a realistic barrier to a claim. But this gets the institutional role of the Court and the progression of history backwards. The behavior of legislators must evolve to satisfy what the Constitution demands. The Constitution does not meter its demands to match the Court’s low expectations of legislators. The Court did not hold racial suppression to be legitimate simply because many officeholders were openly racist and so a dilution claim was “unrealistic.” The Court stated what the Constitution required, and the floor statements, districting decisions, and legislative conduct evolved to try and avoid the new claims.
Nowadays, many legislators gerrymander (racially and politically) in order to achieve partisan ends. To claim that this is the natural and unavoidable state of affairs is to ignore the Court’s own role in shaping that state of affairs and the Court’s duty to prevent the rampant and open violation of voters’ constitutional rights.
Would recognizing the illegitimacy of invidious partisan intent eliminate all legislative attempts to pursue electoral advantages? Of course not. But one need not indulge Pollyannaish notions about the limits of judicial intervention to believe that political claims would—like racial claims—mitigate the frequency, cultural acceptance, and impact of such odious behavior. “[E]ven legislators unarmed with political data and mapping software will have an instinctual sense of where their support lies and may be tempted to nudge boundaries in their favor.” Proof of intent and effect may be difficult to cobble together in such instances, and minor transgressions are likely to go undetected and unvindicated. But in such a world, the mere existence of a constitutional claim still acts as its own constraint on unlawful legislative behavior, forcing legislators to justify their decisions to the public on neutral and legitimate bases and encouraging legislative majorities to avoid overreaching for fear of losing in court.
This may seem like new territory, but the basic constitutional principles found in racial gerrymandering law apply with equal force in the case now pending before the Court. Waiting on just the other side of Kennedy’s hypothetical is a clear logical progression: invidious partisan intent is unconstitutional; legislators here acted with such invidious intent; and voters’ ability-to-elect was negatively impacted because of the government’s targeting for suppression.
A new claim (or claims) might result in a fair number of plans being struck down initially as legislators adapt to new norms and expectations, but once the state of the law is settled the explanation for “the intelligent man on the street” becomes simple. No gobbledygook, no baloney, and only a touch of turmeric. That’s an outcome that would be good for voters and the Court’s reputation.
When CREW launched its emoluments lawsuit back in January, I—among others—wondered whether the plaintiffs’ standing theory would hold up in court. At the time, I floated a different approach: “Why not add a Member of Congress as a plaintiff for a backup standing theory? (i.e., ‘I have a right to vote on consent?’)” Five months later, almost 200 Members of Congress have filed a lawsuit demanding precisely that.
While nonprofits, hoteliers and restaurant groups, and State Attorneys Generals have already brought claims, the congressional plaintiffs bring three new vital elements to the mix: a specific right provided in the text of the clause, a claim that aligns with the purposes of the clause, and an administrable and ministerial judicial remedy.
The Foreign Emoluments Clause prohibits the President, “without the consent of the Congress,” from “accept[ing] any present [or] emolument . . . of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.” The purpose of the clause is to prevent foreign influence and corruption of our government, and the clause fulfills this purpose by subjecting any benefits flowing from foreign states to U.S. officials to a process of explicit congressional approval. By preventing any emoluments from being received unless and until consent is provided, the clause provides a default protection against foreign influence absent positive approval by Congress.
The unique positive nature of the textual requirement establishes an individual right in Members of Congress to provide or withhold consent. And, by requiring congressional approval before emoluments are formally received by the executive, the Constitution sets out specific structural constraints to ensure accountability and transparency. Just as the Constitution’s “advice and consent” provisions play a critical structural role in the separation of powers, the Foreign Emoluments Clause protects public interests and individual liberties by mandating certain procedural checks and balances.
The positive nature of the structural consent requirement also demonstrates why the clause does not present a “political question.” As Joshua Matz has ably pointed out, the argument that Congress may take action if it so desires—and therefore no judicial remedy is permitted or required—would “rewrite and invert” the clear textual command of the clause. The clause’s default setting in the absence of congressional action is to prohibit the acceptance of emoluments, not permit them. Congressional inaction creates an absolute constitutional bar.
The congressional lawsuit also reflects a close fidelity to constitutional principles when one considers the implied cause of action, the relevant zone of interest, the potential remedies available, and the separation-of-powers questions raised by judicial intervention. However much hoteliers may be harmed by (and have standing due to) unlawful competition, no one has argued that the clause was included in the Constitution because the Founders were worried that the President of the United States might undercut the wine sales and conference bookings of his fellow citizens. As such, one might argue (as the DOJ has) that an implied cause of action should not arise in such circumstances. Nor might federal courts feel particularly comfortable as a remedial matter ordering the President to rearrange his financial affairs in a particular manner or making delicate substantive judgment calls about which emoluments pose a threat of corrupting foreign influence.
Yet, the Founders did create a mandatory mechanism to protect the public at large from these threats, and the remedy is to protect the procedural right of legislators to grant or withhold consent. Thus, as far as remedies are concerned, the courts need only define “emoluments” and prohibit the president from receiving them absent congressional approval. A benefit meeting the definition could be held in trust until an affirmative vote of Congress allows the President to “accept” it. Thus, the injunctive relief would be strictly ministerial and administrative, with sensitive political judgments reserved for the legislature. Such an approach would vindicate the rights granted to Congress, adhere to the structural balance struck by the clause, and protect the purposes for which the clause was adopted while ensuring that the judiciary did not intrude upon the proper executive or legislative domains in the process.
The Foreign Emoluments Clause fulfills critical public purposes through a mandatory process designed to ensure transparency and accountability through structural constitutional requirements. These checks and balances create a default prohibition on the receipt of foreign emoluments in the absence of congressional consent. Individual Members of Congress possess a constitutional right to provide—or withhold—that consent, and if the Constitution’s default prohibition is being violated in the interim, those Members should be able to seek a judicial remedy. The lawsuit filed today would provide just that.
Those fighting for a more inclusive and representative democracy would do well to look past the headlines about this term’s election law cases. A sobering trend seems to be unfolding: a good result splashes across the news—monster voter suppression law dies!—only to be replaced with a slow realization that the retreat may be less of a rout and more of a retrenchment.
So it may be with yesterday’s decision in Cooper v. Harris. The Twitter-sized takeaway is a mixed bag: Good short-term result and good clarification of the law on “race-as-a-proxy-for-politics”; bad dicta on partisan advantage and bad signaling for future partisan gerrymandering cases based on Kennedy’s place among the dissenters.
The cause for caution is that this trade-off (more clarity on proxies, less clarity on partisanship) provides helpful tools for fighting yesterday’s proxy battles but may not help bring the larger partisan war to a close. The racially gerrymandered map at issue in yesterday’s case, for example, was replaced by the North Carolina legislature with a partisan gerrymandered map over a year ago. Unless the Court takes a strong stand on partisan gerrymandering next term, meaningful racial and political representation will remain at risk.
On March 1st, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Bethune-Hill. While the Court’s decision to remand eleven of the twelve Virginia legislative districts wasn’t too surprising given Kennedy’s skeptical tone at oral argument, what was surprising was the virtually unanimous acclaim from the election law community. Taking a page from Stephen Colbert, the only question seemed to be whether Bethune was a great decision or the greatest decision.
But this superficial consensus among the Justices should give pause to those who care about the survival of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The sorting claim was developed by opponents of the VRA as a weapon to cut down districts designed to protect minority voting power. Only recently have voting rights lawyers begun to wield this weapon for their own purpose: striking down districts that pack minority voters based on the pretext of “complying” with the VRA. At the end of the day, the claim remains a weapon that can be used to advance or undermine the VRA, and Bethune has sharpened the knife for both sides.
Perhaps the most revealing sign of these crosscutting currents was Chief Justice Roberts’ presence in the majority. Roberts has long opposed Section 2’s results test and previously subscribed to the views of Justices Alito and Thomas regarding predominance, agreeing with Justice Scalia in LULAC that the intentional creation of a majority-minority district alone necessarily triggers strict scrutiny. So why the change? One explanation might be that the Chief Justice is building an illusion of consensus similar to that found in Northwest Austin ahead of a more sweeping and controversial decision yet to come.
With more redistricting litigation ahead, the key to preserving the VRA will be handling the Bethune holding with care. Below I examine the good, the bad, and the ugly about Bethune and offer some thoughts on how it might be used to help enforce the VRA and fend off challenges to the VRA rather than inviting its demise.
The concepts intersect on the margins, but each plays a unique and distinct role in the “dilution v. sorting” question, the “race v. party” question, and the balance of powers question, among others. Moreover, the importance of this distinction goes beyond redistricting law—it could play a key role in forming a more coherent, simple, and rigorous voting rights framework at a time when it could not be more critical.
Below, I explain the basis/intent distinction further, how it resolves a number of redistricting law issues, and how it plays a critical role in preserving foundational principles of constitutional law in our democracy.

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