Opinion ID: 69206
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Citizenship and the Voting Rights Act

Text: The Plaintiffs argue on appeal that the Supreme Court's decision in Bartlett v. Strickland held that only voting-age population matters under the first Gingles test  not citizen voting-age population; that the district court applied too stringent a test. We, of course, review de novo the legal standards that a district court applied in determining whether § 2 of the VRA has been violated. [6] Still, the Plaintiffs' claim has no merit. Plaintiffs rely on passages from the plurality opinion in Strickland. Specifically, they argue that  with the following language  three members of the Supreme Court altered the first Gingles requirement: [T]he majority-minority rule relies on an objective, numerical test: Do minorities make up more than 50 percent of the voting-age population in the relevant geographic area? [7] To the Plaintiffs, the omission of the word citizen signals that citizenship is no longer strictly relevant. For four reasons we are not persuaded. First, the question of citizenship was not before the Court in Strickland. Rather, the question was: If a minority population in a demonstration district comprises less than 50% of the possible voters, can it still meet the first Gingles test by showing that it can win elections with the help of a reliable crossover vote? [8] The question was quantitative, how many  not qualitative, what kind of people. Second, language throughout Justice Kennedy's plurality opinion evidences the vitality of the citizenship requirement. Midway through the opinion, Justice Kennedy discusses whether a minority population could constitute a compact voting majority. [9] A voting majority implies that the majority can actually vote, so the inquiry must take account of both citizenship and voting age. Then, at the end of his opinion, Kennedy restates his conclusion: Only when a geographically compact group of minority voters could form a majority in a single-member district has the first Gingles requirement been met. [10] Because only voting-age citizens can be voters who could form a majority, both of these traits bear on the test. It is safe to assume that because citizenship was not at issue in the case, Justice Kennedy occasionally omitted the concept for the sake of concision. [11] Third, the jurisprudential backdrop belies the notion that the Court would hold that citizenship is irrelevant under § 2 of the VRA. Indeed, several sister Circuits have joined the Fifth in requiring voting rights plaintiffs to prove that the minority citizen voting-age population comprises a majority. [12] It is most unlikely, especially in a case that does not have the citizenship issue, that the Court would silently overrule all of these Circuits' rules. [13] Fourth, the Court issued no binding opinion in Strickland, only a judgment. Only Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito joined Justice Kennedy's plurality opinion. Justices Thomas and Scalia joined the judgment affirming that no voting rights violation existed, but flatly denied that any voter dilution claim could be made under § 2 of the VRA. [14] In short, even if the plurality had said in a voice that Plaintiffs would magnify that citizenship did not necessarily matter for the first Gingles test, three justices a rule do not make. [15]