The federal appeals court found that claims of vote dilution must be brought by single minority classes, overturning precedent allowing coalitions of voters to bring claims.
GALVESTON, Texas (CN) —The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected on Thursday voter dilution claims by a coalition of different minority group in a redistricting case concerning maps drawn by Galveston County’s Commissioner Court that eliminated a predominately Black and Latino precinct in Texas.
An en banc panel of the New Orleans-based federal appeals court found that the voters who sued the commissioner court failed to show that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act protects the interest of a coalition of voters of different races, ethnicities and languages.
“Nowhere does Section 2 indicate that two minority groups may combine forces to pursue a vote dilution claim,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Edith Jones in the 30-page majority opinion. “On the contrary, the statute identifies the subject of a vote dilution claim as ‘a class,’ in the singular, not the plural.”
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.
Speaking on the precedent set in Campos, Jones wrote that the court erred in that case by placing the effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act in peril.
“Our decision in Campos … extended Section 2 into racial and ethnic territory that extinguishes the line between a group’s immutable individual characteristics, which may signal real political cohesiveness and opportunistic political combinations,” wrote Jones.
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.
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