Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/13-895
Timestamp: 2017-06-28 17:32:25
Document Index: 327094125

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ALABAMA LEGISLATIVE BLACK CAUCUS v. ALABAMA | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
Supreme Court aboutsearch liibulletin subscribe previews ALABAMA LEGISLATIVE BLACK CAUCUS v. ALABAMA
FONT et al.
v. FONT
No. 13–895. Argued November 12, 2014—Decided March 25, 20151
In 2012 Alabama redrew the boundaries of the State’s 105 House districts and 35 Senate districts. In doing so, while Alabama sought to achieve numerous traditional districting objectives—e.g., compactness, not splitting counties or precincts, minimizing change, and protecting incumbents—it placed yet greater importance on two goals: (1) minimizing a district’s deviation from precisely equal population, by keeping any deviation less than 1% of the theoretical ideal; and (2) seeking to avoid retrogression with respect to racial minorities’ “ability to elect their preferred candidates of choice” under §5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,
52 U. S. C. §10304(b), by maintaining roughly the same black population percentage in existing majority-minority districts.
Appellants—Alabama Legislative Black Caucus (Caucus), Alabama Democratic Conference (Conference), and others—claim that Alabama’s new district boundaries create a “racial gerrymander” in violation of the
Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. After a bench trial, the three-judge District Court ruled (2 to 1) for the State. It recognized that electoral districting violates the Equal Protection Clause when race is the “predominant” consideration in deciding “to place a significant number of voters within or without a particular district,” Miller v. Johnson,
515 U. S. 900, and the use of race is not “narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest,” Shaw v. Hunt,
517 U. S. 899 (Shaw II).
Held: 1. The District Court’s analysis of the racial gerrymandering claim as referring to the State “as a whole,” rather than district-by-district, was legally erroneous. Pp. 5–12.
(a) This Court has consistently described a claim of racial gerrymandering as a claim that race was improperly used in the drawing of the boundaries of one or more specific electoral
districts, see, e.g., Shaw v. Reno,
509 U. S. 630 (Shaw I), and has described the plaintiff’s evidentiary burden similarly, see Miller, supra, at 916. The Court’s district-specific language makes sense in light of the personal nature of the harms that underlie a racial gerrymandering claim, see Bush v. Vera,
517 U. S. 952; Shaw I, supra, at 648. Pp. 5–6.
(b) The District Court found the fact that racial criteria had not predominated in the drawing of some Alabama districts sufficient to defeat a claim of racial gerrymandering with respect to the State as
an undifferentiated whole. But a showing that race-based criteria did not significantly affect the drawing of some Alabama districts would have done little to defeat a claim that race-based criteria predominantly affected the drawing of other Alabama districts. Thus, the District Court’s undifferentiated statewide analysis is insufficient, and the District Court must on remand consider racial gerrymandering with respect to the individual districts challenged by appellants. Pp. 7–8.
(a) The statute’s language, 52 U. S. C. §§10304(b), (d), and Department of Justice Guidelines make clear that §5 is satisfied if minority voters retain the ability to elect their preferred candidates. The history of §5 further supports this view, as Congress adopted the language in §5 to reject this Court’s decision in Georgia v. Ashcroft,
539 U. S. 461, and to accept the views of Justice Souter’s dissent—that, in a §5 retrogression case, courts should ask whether a new voting provision would likely deprive minority voters of their ability to elect a candidate of their choice, and that courts should not mechanically rely upon numerical percentages but should take account of all significant circumstances, id., at 493, 498, 505, 509. Here, both the District Court and the legislature relied heavily upon a mechanically numerical view as to what counts as forbidden retrogression. Pp. 19–22.
Breyer, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan,
JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Roberts, C. J., and Thomas and Alito, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., filed a dissenting opinion.
1Together with No. 13–1138, Alabama Democratic Conference
., also on appeal from the same court.
13–895
13–1138
The Alabama Legislative Black Caucus and the Alabama Democratic Conference appeal a three-judge Federal District Court decision rejecting their challenges to the lawfulness of Alabama’s 2012 redistricting of its State House of Representatives and State Senate. The appeals focus upon the appellants’ claims that new district boundaries create “racial gerrymanders” in violation of the
Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. See, e.g., Shaw v. Hunt,
517 U. S. 899–908 (1996) (Shaw II) (
Fourteenth Amendment forbids use of race as “ ‘predominant’ ” district boundary-drawing “ ‘factor’ ” unless boundaries are “narrowly tailored” to achieve a “ ‘compelling state interest’ ” (citations omitted)). We find that the District Court applied incorrect legal standards in evaluating the claims. We consequently vacate its decision and remand the cases for further proceedings.
First, it sought to minimize the extent to which a district might deviate from the theoretical ideal of precisely equal population. In particular, it set as a goal creating a set of districts in which no district would deviate from the theoretical, precisely equal ideal by more than 1%—i.e., a more rigorous deviation standard than our precedents have found necessary under the Constitution. See Brown v. Thomson,
462 U. S. 835,
842 (1983)
(5% deviation from ideal generally permissible). No one here doubts the desirability of a State’s efforts generally to come close to a one-person, one-vote ideal.
Second, it sought to ensure compliance with federal law, and, in particular, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
439, as amended,
52 U. S. C. §10301
et seq. At the time of the redistricting Alabama was a covered jurisdiction under that Act. Accordingly §5 of the Act required Alabama to demonstrate that an electoral change, such as redistricting, would not bring about retrogression in respect to racial minorities’ “ability . . . to elect their preferred candidates of choice.”
52 U. S. C. §10304(b). Specifically, Alabama believed that, to avoid retrogression under §5, it was required to maintain roughly the same black population percentage in existing majority-minority districts. See Appendix B, infra.
After a bench trial, the Federal District Court held in favor of the State, i.e., against the Caucus and the Conference, with respect to their racial gerrymandering claims as well as with respect to several other legal claims that the Caucus and the Conference had made. With respect to racial gerrymandering, the District Court recognized that electoral districting violates the Equal Protection Clause when (1) race is the “dominant and controlling” or “predominant” consideration in deciding “to place a significant number of voters within or without a particular district,” Miller v. Johnson,
, and (2) the use of race is not “narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest,” Shaw II, 517 U. S., at 902; see also Shaw v. Reno,
649 (1993)
(Shaw I ) (Constitution forbids “separat[ion of ] voters into different districts on the basis of race” when the separation “lacks sufficient justification”); Bush v. Vera,
517 U. S. 952–959, 976 (1996) (principal opinion of O’Connor, J.) (same). But, after trial the District Court held (2 to 1) that the Caucus and the Conference had failed to prove their racial gerrymandering claims. The Caucus along with the Conference (and several other plaintiffs) appealed. We noted probable jurisdiction with respect to the racial gerrymandering claims. 572 U. S. ___ (2014).
A racial gerrymandering claim, however, applies to the boundaries of individual districts. It applies district-by-district. It does not apply to a State considered as an undifferentiated “whole.” We have consistently described a claim of racial gerrymandering as a claim that race was improperly used in the drawing of the boundaries of one or more specific electoral
districts. See, e.g., Shaw I, 509 U. S., at 649 (violation consists of “separat[ing] voters into different districts on the basis of race” (emphasis added)); Vera, 517 U. S., at 965 (principal opinion) (“[Courts] must scrutinize each challenged district . . .” (emphasis added)). We have described the plaintiff’s evidentiary burden similarly. See Miller, supra, at 916 (plaintiff must show that “race was the predominant factor motivating the legislature’s decision to place a significant number of voters within or without a particular district” (emphasis added)).
Our district-specific language makes sense in light of the nature of the harms that underlie a racial gerrymandering claim. Those harms are personal. They include being “personally . . . subjected to [a] racial classification,” Vera, supra, at 957 (principal opinion), as well as being represented by a legislator who believes his “primary obligation is to represent only the members” of a particular racial group, Shaw I, supra, at 648. They directly threaten a voter who lives in the district attacked. But they do not so keenly threaten a voter who lives elsewhere in the State. Indeed, the latter voter normally lacks standing to pursue a racial gerrymandering claim. United States v. Hays,
515 U. S. 737–745 (1995).
We recognize that the plaintiffs relied heavily upon statewide evidence to prove that race predominated in the drawing of individual district lines. See generally Caucus Post-Trial Brief 1, 3–7, 48–50; Conference Post-Trial Brief 2, 44–45, 105–106. And they also sought to prove that the use of race to draw the boundaries of the majority-minority districts affected the boundaries of other districts as well. See, e.g., 1 Tr. 36–37, 48, 55, 70–71, 93, 111, 124 (testimony of Dial); 3 Tr. 142, 162 (testimony of Hinaman); see generally Caucus Post-Trial Brief 8–16. Such evidence is perfectly relevant. We have said that the plaintiff’s burden in a racial gerrymandering case is “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. Cf. Easley v. Cromartie,
(explaining the plaintiff’s burden in cases, unlike these, in which the State argues that politics, not race, was its predominant motive). That Alabama expressly adopted and applied a policy of prioritizing mechanical racial targets above all other districting criteria (save one-person, one-vote) provides evidence that race motivated the drawing of particular lines in multiple districts in the State. And neither the use of statewide evidence nor the effort to show widespread effect can transform a racial gerrymandering claim about a set of individual districts into a separate, general claim that the legislature racially gerrymandered the State “as” an undifferentiated “whole.”
The principal dissent adds that the Conference waived its district-specific claims on appeal. Cf. post, at 8. But that is not so. When asked specifically about its position at oral argument, the Conference stated that it was relying on statewide evidence to prove its district-specific challenges. Tr. of Oral Arg. 15–16. Its counsel said that “the exact same policy was applied in every black-majority district,” id., at 15, and “[b]y statewide, we simply mean a common policy applied to every district in the State,” id.,at 16. We accept the Conference’s clarification, which is consistent with how it presented these claims below.
We consequently conclude that the District Court’s analysis of racial gerrymandering of the State “as a whole” was legally erroneous. We find that the appellants did not waive their right to consideration of their claims as applied to particular districts. Accordingly, we remand the cases. See Pullman-Standard v. Swint,
456 U. S. 273,
(remand is required when the District Court “failed to make a finding because of an erroneous view of the law”); Rapanos v. United States,
757 (2006)
“[a]n association has standing to bring suit on behalf of its members when its members would have standing to sue in their own right, the interests at stake are germane to the organization’s purpose, and neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires individuals members’ participation in the lawsuit.” Id., at 1291 (quoting Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc.,
528 U. S. 167,
To be sure, the District Court had an independent obligation to confirm its jurisdiction, even in the absence of a state challenge. See post, at 4–5 (Scalia, J., dissenting). But, in these circumstances, elementary principles of procedural fairness required that the District Court, rather than acting sua sponte, give the Conference an oppor-tunity to provide evidence of member residence. Cf. Warth v. Seldin,
422 U. S. 490–502 (1975) (explaining that a court may “allow or [r]equire” a plaintiff to supplement the record to show standing and that “[i]f, after this opportu-nity, the plaintiff’s standing does not adequately appear from all materials of record, the complaint must be dismissed” (emphasis added)). Moreover, we have no reason to believe that the Conference would have been unable to provide a list of members, at least with respect to the majority-minority districts, had it been asked. It has filed just such a list in this Court. See Affidavit of Joe L. Reed Pursuant to this Court’s Rule 32.3 (Lodging of Conference affidavit listing members residing in each majority-minority district in the State); see also Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1,
551 U. S. 701,
718 (2007)
(accepting a lodged affidavit in similar circumstances). Thus, the District Court on remand should reconsider the Conference’s standing by permitting the Conference to file its list of members and permitting the State to respond, as appropriate.
In our view, however, this alternative holding rests upon a misperception of the law. Section 5, which covered particular States and certain other jurisdictions, does not require a covered jurisdiction to maintain a particular numerical minority percentage. It requires the jurisdiction to maintain a minority’s ability to elect a preferred candidate of choice. That is precisely what the language of the statute says. It prohibits a covered jurisdiction from adopting any change that “has the purpose of or will have the effect of diminishing the ability of [the minority group] to elect their preferred candidates of choice.”
52 U. S. C. §10304(b); see also §10304(d) (the “purpose of subsection (b) . . . is to protect the ability of such citizens to elect their preferred candidates of choice”).
The history of §5 further supports this view. In adopting the statutory language to which we referred above, Congress rejected this Court’s decision in Georgia v. Ashcroft,
539 U. S. 461,
480 (2003)
(holding that it is not nec-essarily retrogressive for a State to replace safe majority-minority districts with crossover or influence districts), and it adopted the views of the dissent. H. R. Rep. No. 109–478, pp. 68–69, and n. 183 (2006). While the thrust of Justice Souter’s dissent was that, in a §5 retrogression case, courts should ask whether a new voting provision would likely deprive minority voters of their ability to elect a candidate of their choice—language that Congress adopted in revising §5—his dissent also made clear that courts should not mechanically rely upon numerical percentages but should take account of all significant circumstances. Georgia v. Ashcroft, supra, at 493, 498, 505, 509. And while the revised language of §5 may raise some interpretive questions—e.g., its application to coalition, crossover, and influence districts—it is clear that Congress did not mandate that a 1% reduction in a 70% black population district would be necessarily retrogressive. See Persily, The Promises and Pitfalls of the New Voting Rights Act, 117 Yale L. J. 174, 218 (2007). Indeed, Alabama’s mechanical interpretation of §5 can raise serious constitutional concerns. See Miller, supra, at 926.
In saying this, we do not insist that a legislature guess precisely what percentage reduction a court or the Justice Department might eventually find to be retrogressive. The law cannot insist that a state legislature, when redistricting, determine precisely what percent minority population §5 demands. The standards of §5 are complex; they often require evaluation of controverted claims about voting behavior; the evidence may be unclear; and, with respect to any particular district, judges may disagree about the proper outcome. The law cannot lay a trap for an unwary legislature, condemning its redistricting plan as either (1) unconstitutional racial gerrymandering should the legislature place a few too many minority voters in a district or (2) retrogressive under §5 should the legislature place a few too few. See Vera, 517 U. S., at 977 (principal opinion). Thus, we agree with the United States that a court’s analysis of 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. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 29 (citing Ricci v. DeStefano,
557 U. S. 557,
). This standard, as the United States points out, “does not demand that a State’s actions actually be necessary to achieve a compelling state interest in order to be constitutionally valid.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 29. And legislators “may have a strong basis in evidence to use racial classifications in order to comply with a statute when they have good reasons to believe such use is required, even if a court does not find that the actions were necessary for statutory compliance.” Ibid. (emphasis added).
A voter has standing to bring a racial-gerrymandering claim only if he votes in a gerrymandered district, or if specific evidence demonstrates that he has suffered the special harms that attend racial gerrymandering. United States v. Hays,
515 U. S. 737–745 (1995). However, the Democratic Conference only claimed to have “chapters and members in almost all counties in the state.” Newton Plaintiffs’ Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law in No. 12–cv–691, Doc. 195–1, pp. 3–4 (Democratic Conference Post-Trial Brief) (emphasis added). Yet the Court concludes that this fact, combined with the Conference’s self-description as a “ ‘statewide political caucus’ ” that endorses candidates for political office, “supports an inference that the organization has members in all of the State’s majority-minority districts, other things being equal.” Ante, at 13. The Court provides no support for this theory of jurisdiction by illogical inference, perhaps because this Court has rejected other attempts to peddle more-likely-than-not standing. See Summers v. Earth Island Institute,
497 (2009)
(rejecting a test for organizational standing that asks “whether, accepting [an] organization’s self-description of the activities of its members, there is a statistical probability that some of those members are threatened with concrete injury”).
Incredibly, the Court thinks that “elementary principles of procedural fairness” require giving the Democratic Conference the opportunity to prove on appeal what it neglected to prove at trial. Ante, at 14. It observes that the Conference had no reason to believe it should provide such information because “the State did not contest its membership in every district,” and the opinion cites an affidavit lodged with this Court providing a list of the Conference’s members in each majority-minority district in Alabama. Ibid. I cannot imagine why the absence of a state challenge would matter. Whether or not there was such a challenge, it was the Conference’s responsibility, as “[t]he party invoking federal jurisdiction,” to establish standing. See Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife,
561 (1992)
. That responsibility was enforceable, challenge or no, by the court: “The federal courts are under an independent obligation to examine their own jurisdiction, and standing ‘is perhaps the most important of [the jurisdictional] doctrines.’ ” FW/PBS, Inc. v. Dallas,
493 U. S. 215–231 (1990) (citations omitted). And because standing is not a “mere pleading requiremen[t] but rather an indispensable part of the plaintiff’s case, each element must be supported in the same way as any other matter on which the plaintiff bears the burden of proof, i.e., with the manner and degree of evidence required at the successive stages of the litigation.” Defenders of Wildlife, supra, at 561.
The Court points to Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1,
, as support for its decision to sandbag Alabama with the Democratic Conference’s out-of-time (indeed, out-of-court) lodging in this Court. The circumstances in that case, however, are far afield. The organization of parents in that case had established organizational standing in the lower court by showing that it had members with children who would be subject to the school district’s “integration tiebreaker,” which was applied at ninth grade. Brief for Respondents, O. T. 2006, No. 05–908, p. 16. By the time the case reached this Court, however, the youngest of these children had entered high school, and so would no longer be subject to the challenged policy. Ibid. Accordingly, we accepted a lodging that provided names of additional, younger children in order to show that the organization had not lost standing as a result of the long delay that often accompanies federal litigation. Here, by contrast, the Democratic Conference’s lodging in the Supreme Court is its first attempt to show that it has members in the majority-minority districts. This is too little, too late.
But that is just the start. Even if the Democratic Conference had standing to
bring district-specific racial-gerrymandering claims, there remains the question whether it did bring them. Its complaint alleged three counts: (1) Violation of §2 of the Voting Rights Act, (2) Racial gerrymandering in violation of the Equal Protection Clause, and (3) §1983 violations of the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments. Complaint in No. 2:12–cv–1081, Doc. 1, pp. 17–18. The racial gerrymandering count alleged that “Alabama Acts 2012-602 and 2012-603 were drawn for the purpose and effect of minimizing the opportunity of minority voters to participate effectively in the political process,” and that this “racial gerrymandering by Alabama Acts 2012-602 and 2012-603 violates the rights of Plaintiffs.” Id., at 17. It made no reference to specific districts that were racially gerrymandered; indeed, the only particular jurisdictions mentioned anywhere in the complaint were Senate District 11, Senate District 22, Madison County Senate Districts, House District 73, and Jefferson and Montgomery County House Districts. None of the Senate Districts is majority-minority. Nor is House District 73. Jefferson County does, admittedly, contain 8 of the 27 majority-minority House Districts in Alabama, and Montgomery County contains another 4, making a total of 12. But they also contain 14 majority-white House Districts between them. In light of this, it is difficult to understand the Court’s statement that appellants’ “evidence and . . . arguments embody the claim that individual majority-minority districts were racially gerrymandered.” Ante, at 8.
To be sure, the Conference employed language and presented factual claims at various points in its 126-page post-trial brief that are evocative of a claim of racial gerrymandering. But in clinging to these stray comments to support its conclusion that the Conference made district-specific racial-gerrymandering claims, ante, at 9–10, the Court ignores the context in which these comments appear—the context of a clear Voting Rights Act §2 claim. Voting Rights Act claims and racial-gerrymandering claims share some of the same elements. See League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry,
(Scalia, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). Thus, allegations made in the course of arguing a §2 claim will often be indistinguishable from allegations that would be made in support of a racial-gerrymandering claim. The appearance of such allegations in one of the Conference’s briefs might support reversal if this case came to us on appeal from the District Court’s grant of a motion to dismiss. See Johnson v. City of Shelby, 574 U. S. ___, ___ (2014) (per curiam) (slip op., at 1) (noting that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure “do not countenance dismissal of a complaint for imperfect statement of the legal theory supporting the claim as-serted”). But here the District Court held a full trial be-fore concluding that the Conference failed to make or prove any district-specific racial-gerrymandering claims with respect to the majority-minority districts. In this posture, and on this record, I cannot agree with the Court that the Conference’s district-specific evidence, clearly made in the course of arguing a §2 theory, should be read to give rise to district-specific claims of racial gerrymandering with respect to Alabama’s majority-minority districts.
The Black Caucus complaint contained three counts: (1) Violation of One Person, One Vote, see Reynolds v. Sims,
377 U. S. 533 (1964)
; (2) Dilution and Isolation of Black Voting Strength in violation of §2 of the Voting Rights Act; and (3) Partisan Gerrymandering. Complaint in No. 2:12–cv–691, Doc. 1, pp. 15–22. The failure to raise any racial-gerrymandering claim was not a mere oversight or the consequence of inartful pleading. Indeed, in its amended complaint the Black Caucus specifically cited this Court’s leading racial-gerrymandering case for the proposition that “traditional or neutral districting principles may not be subordinated in a dominant fashion by either racial or partisan interests absent a compelling state interest for doing so.” Amended Complaint in No. 2:12–cv–691, Doc. 60, p. 23 (citing Shaw v. Reno,
642 (1993)
; emphasis added). This quote appears in the first paragraph under the “Partisan Gerrymandering” heading, and claims of subordination to racial interests are notably absent from the Black Caucus complaint.
“[F]ew devices could be better designed to exacerbate racial tensions than the consciously segregated districting system currently being constructed in the name of the Voting Rights Act.” Holder v. Hall,
512 U. S. 874,
907 (1994)
(Thomas, J., concurring in judgment). These consolidated cases are yet another installment in the “disastrous misadventure” of this Court’s voting rights jurisprudence. Id., at 893. We have somehow arrived at a place where the parties agree that Alabama’s legislative districts should be fine-tuned to achieve some “optimal” result with respect to black voting power; the only dis-agreement is about what percentage of blacks should be placed in those optimized districts. This is nothing more than a fight over the “best” racial quota.
Under the 2006 amendments to §5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Alabama was also under a federal command to avoid drawing new districts that would “have the effect of diminishing the ability” of black voters “to elect their preferred candidates of choice.”
52 U. S. C. §10304(b). To comply with §5, the legislature adopted a policy of maintaining the same percentage of black voters within each of those districts as existed in the 2001 plans. See ante, at 16. This, the districting committee thought, would preserve the ability of black voters to elect the same number of preferred candidates. App. to Juris. Statement 174–175. The Department of Justice (DOJ) apparently agreed. Acting under its authority to administer §5 of the Voting Rights Act, the DOJ precleared Alabama’s plans.
Id.,at 9.
This Court created the current system of race-based redistricting by adopting expansive readings of §2 and §5 of the Voting Rights Act. Both §2 and §5 prohibit States from implementing voting laws that “den[y] or abridg[e] the right to vote on account of race or color.” §§10304(a), 10301(a). But both provisions extend to only certain types of voting laws: any “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure.” Ibid. As I have previously explained, the terms “ ‘standard, practice, or procedure’ . . . refer only to practices that affect minor-ity citizens’ access to the ballot,” such as literacy tests. Holder, 512 U. S. at 914 (opinion concurring in judgment). They do not apply to “[d]istricting systems and electoral mechanisms that may affect the ‘weight’ given to a ballot duly cast and counted.” Ibid. Yet this Court has adopted far-reaching interpretations of both provisions, holding that they encompass legislative redistricting and other actions that might “dilute” the strength of minority votes. See generally Thornburg v. Gingles,
478 U. S. 30 (1986)
(§2 “vote dilution” challenge to legislative districting plan); see also Allen v. State Bd. of Elections,
393 U. S. 544–587 (1969) (Harlan, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
The Court’s interpretation of §2 and §5 have resulted in challenge after challenge to the drawing of voting districts. See, e.g., Bartlett v. Strickland,
556 U. S. 1 (2009)
; League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry,
548 U. S. 399(2006); Georgia v. Ashcroft,
539 U. S. 461 (2003)
; Reno v. Bossier Parish School Bd.,
528 U. S. 320 (2000)
(Bossier II ); Hunt v. Cromartie,
526 U. S. 541 (1999)
520 U. S. 471 (1997)
(Bossier I ); Bush v. Vera,
517 U. S. 952 (1996)
(Shaw II ); Miller v. Johnson,
515 U. S. 900 (1995)
; United States v. Hays,
515 U. S. 737 (1995)
; Holder, supra; Johnson v. De Grandy,
512 U. S. 997 (1994)
; Growe v. Emison,
507 U. S. 25 (1993)
; Shaw v. Reno,
509 U. S. 630 (1993)
(Shaw I ); Voinovich v. Quilter,
507 U. S. 146 (1993)
The DOJ denied several of Georgia’s proposals on the ground that they did not include enough majority-black districts. Id., at 1366. The plan it finally approved was substantially similar to the ACLU’s max-black proposal, id., at 1364–1366, creating three majority-black districts, with total black populations of 56.63%, 62.27%, and 64.07%, id., at 1366, and n. 12.
Georgia was not the only State subject to the DOJ’s maximization policy. North Carolina, for example, submitted a congressional redistricting plan after the 1990 Census, but the DOJ rejected it because it did not create a new majority-minority district, and thus “appear[ed] to minimize minority voting strength.” Shaw v. Barr, 808 F. Supp. 461, 463–464 (EDNC 1992) (quoting Letter from John R. Dunne, Assistant Attorney General of N. C., Civil Rights Div., to Tiare B. Smiley, Special Deputy Attorney General of N. C. 4 (Dec. 18, 1991)). The DOJ likewise pressured Louisiana to create a new majority-black district when the State sought approval of its congressional redistricting plan following the 1990 Census. See Hays v. Louisiana, 839 F. Supp. 1188, 1190 (WD La. 1993), va-cated on other grounds by Louisiana v. Hays,
512 U. S. 1230 (1994)
Alabama’s 2010 redistricting plans were modeled after max-black-inspired plans that the State put in place in the 1990’s under the DOJ’s max-black policy. See generally Kelley v. Bennett, 96 F. Supp. 2d 1301 (MD Ala. 2000), vacated on other grounds by Sinkfield v. Kelley,
531 U. S. 28 (2000)
Dr. Reed populated these districts with a percentage of black residents that achieved an optimal middle ground—a “happy medium”—between too many and too few. Id., at 1311. Twenty-three of the twenty-seven majority-black House districts were between 60% and 70% black under Reed’s plan, id., at 1311, and Senate District 26—one of the districts at issue today—was pushed from 65% to 70% black. Id., at 1315.
A District Court struck down several districts created in the Reed-Buskey plan as unconstitutionally based on race. Id., at 1324. This Court reversed, however, holding that the plaintiffs lacked standing because they did not live in the gerrymandered districts. Sinkfield, supra, at 30–31.
Section 5 tied the State to those districts: Under this Court’s §5 precedents, States are prohibited from enacting a redistricting plan that “would lead to a retrogression in the position of racial minorities.” Beer v. United States,
425 U. S. 130,
141 (1976)
. In other words, the State could not retrogress from the previous plan if it wished to comply with §5.
Congress passed the 2006 amendments in response to our attempt to define “retrogression” in Georgia v. Ashcroft,
539 U. S. 461. Prior to that decision, practically any reapportionment change could “be deemed ‘retrogressive’ under our vote dilution jurisprudence by a court inclined to find it so.” Bossier I, 520 U. S., at 490–491 (Thomas, J., concurring). “[A] court could strike down any reapportionment plan, either because it did not include enough majority-minority districts or because it did (and thereby diluted the minority vote in the remaining districts).” Id., at 491. Our §5 jurisprudence thus “inevitably force[d] the courts to make political judgments regarding which type of apportionment best serves supposed minority interests—judgments courts are ill equipped to make.” Id., at 492.
In response, Congress amended §5 and effectively overruled Georgia v. Ashcroft. See
577. The 2006 amendments added subsection (b), which provides:
“Any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice or procedure with respect to voting that has the purpose or will have the effect of diminishing the ability of any citizens of the United States on account of race or color . . . to elect their preferred candidates of choice denies or abridges the right to vote within the meaning of . . . this section.”
52 U. S. C. §10304(b). See §5,