WASHINGTON, DC – Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (“RITE”), a non-profit organization that supports litigation to protect the rule of law in elections, has filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to end the use of unworkable race-based judicial tests in redistricting cases brought under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Alabama’s 2020 decennial redistricting congressional maps have made multiple trips to the Supreme Court. This time, Alabama sought Supreme Court review after a three-judge district court panel ruled its 2023 remedial congressional map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by failing to create a second majority-minority district, even though doing so would have violated traditional districting principles.
For nearly forty years, courts have struggled to apply the nine-factor Gingles test to vote-dilution racial gerrymandering claims. Gingles has flummoxed courts and for good reason. As RITE’s brief explains, the test forces courts to make impossible political judgments about how much electoral power different racial groups “deserve.” Simultaneously, states must avoid considering race too much or risk violating the Fourteenth Amendment.
“Alabama’s case gives the Supreme Court a valuable opportunity to abandon the failed, unworkable Gingles test that has wreaked havoc on state’s redistricting for too long,” said RITE President Justin Riemer. “It’s better to have no test than one that’s unmanageable and constitutionally suspect, and in any event, courts have other tools at their disposal to police actual racial gerrymandering. We urge the Supreme Court to reverse the district court’s flawed ruling.”
