Terrible. They’re just making this shit up as they go.
Commissioner Stephen Holmes
Distinct minority groups cannot join together in coalitions to claim their votes are diluted in redistricting cases under the Voting Rights Act, a divided federal appeals court ruled Thursday, acknowledging that it was reversing years of its own precedent.
At issue was a redistricting case in Galveston County, Texas, where Black and Latino groups had joined to challenge district maps drawn by the county commission.
A federal district judge had rejected the maps, saying they diluted minority strength. A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals initially upheld the decision before the full court decided to reconsider the issue, resulting in Thursday’s 12-6 decision.
Judge Edith Jones, writing for the majority, said such challenges by minority coalitions “do not comport” with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and are not supported by Supreme Court precedent. The decision reverses a 1988 5th Circuit decision and is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court.
“Nowhere does Section 2 indicate that two minority groups may combine forces to pursue a vote dilution claim,” wrote Jones, who was nominated to the court by former President Ronald Reagan. “On the contrary, the statute identifies the subject of a vote dilution claim as ‘a class,’ in the singular, not the plural.”
Jones was joined by 11 other nominees of Republican presidents on the court. Dissenting were five members nominated by Democratic presidents and one nominee of a Republican president. The 5th Circuit reviews cases from federal district courts in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
See here, here, and here for some background. Courthouse News adds on.
The ruling addresses three lawsuits that were filed against Galveston County and consolidated for arguments. In addition to the voters, the plaintiffs include three chapters of the NAACP and a chapter of the League of Latin United American Citizens located in the region and the Biden Administration.
Adopted in 2021, the maps at issue eliminated precincts in which a coalition of Black and Latino voters selected the county’s sole Democratic commissioner. In addition to their claims under the Voting Rights Act, the NAACP and voters argued in their lawsuits that the new map was intentionally discriminatory and racially gerrymandered.
A lower court agreed with the plaintiffs and ordered that the maps be redrawn, leading the county to appeal. While the appellate court’s decision reverses the lower court’s decision, it also overturns the court’s precedent in Campos v. City of Baytown, which allowed minority groups to band together to bring vote dilution claims.
Jones, a Ronald Reagan appointee, was joined by 11 judges — all appointed by Republican presidents — to determine Black voters and Latino voters do not share any defining characteristics that would allow them to bring their claims together.
Rather, either group’s claim that the maps negatively impact them based on their belonging to a minority class should be examined separately.
[…]
The only claims surviving the majority’s opinion are the discrimination and racial gerrymandering claims put forth by the NAACP branches and the voters.
Robert Quintero, president of League of Latin United American Citizens’ Galveston chapter, said in an email to Courthouse News that he was disappointed in the court’s ruling but remains optimistic.
“We still have a shot at the counts that were handed down back to the lower court and we feel optimistic about those two counts,” said Quintero.
The dissenting judges identified the overturning of Campos as a critical error.
In her short dissent, U.S. Circuit Judge Catharina Haynes wrote that the claims presented by the plaintiffs affirmatively met the preconditions to bring vote dilution claims under the precedent set by the Supreme Court’s 1986 ruling in Thornburg v. Gingles.
U.S. Circuit Judge Dana Douglas, a Joe Biden appointee, was joined by four judges appointed by Democrat presidents in her 38-page dissent. She wrote that the majority’s decision “dismantled the effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act in this circuit, leaving four decades of en banc precedent flattened in its wake.”
Douglas argues that her colleagues had to reject methods of statutory interpretation and essentially jump through hoops to reach its conclusion in the majority opinion. Where the majority sees the singular “class” identified in the statute, Douglas sees that the use of the singular does not lead to an explicit prohibition on coalition claims.
“To imply, as the majority does, that discrimination is permissible so long as the victims of the discrimination are racially diverse, is not only an absurd conclusion but it is one with grave consequences,” wrote Douglas. “Because the majority’s conclusion is atextual, ahistorical, and it allows the Constitution to ‘make a promise which the Nation cannot keep,’ I dissent.”
Furthermore, Douglas highlighted the plaintiff’s case as the exact reason the Voting Rights Act exists: to prevent a white majority from voting in unison to eliminate any chance of Black and Latino voters in Galveston County of electing the candidate of their choice.
Just shameful. Even recent precedent means nothing if it stands in the way of what they want. Supreme Court reform is all the rage now, but anything that doesn’t also include tearing the Fifth Circuit down to the studs and rebuilding it from scratch isn’t sufficient. This lawless court cannot stand. The Trib and Law Dork have more.