[EL] Alabama decision

[Rick Hasen]

In Opinion by #SCOTUS Shortlister J. Pryor, Court Strikes 12 Alabama Districts as Racial Gerrymanders, Partial Dissent by Judge Thompson<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90572>
Posted on January 20, 2017 12:34 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90572> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
In a 457 page opinion<https://ecf.almd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2012cv0691-316> (including appendices) by Trump #SCOTUS shortlister William Pryor, a three-judge federal district court in the Alabama racial gerrymandering case has struck down 12 challenged Alabama districts as unconstitutional. Judge Myron Thompson, in a separate 120-page opinion,<https://ecf.almd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2012cv0691-317> agreed those districts were unconstitutional but believed 12 more districts were unconstitutional.
When the case first went to this panel, the two Republican judges on the panel found no racial gerrymander and the one Democrat on the panel found a racial gerrymander.
The Supreme Court reversed, <https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-895_o7jq.pdf> and remanded the case for reconsideration of the matter district by district (instead of looking at the plan as a whole). Today’s ruling is a result of the remand.
The decision comes while two other racial gerrymandering cases are before the Court, and it is possible that one or both sides will appeal this to SCOTUS, and that SCOTUS will send the case back for a third round in light of the other cases now pending before the Supreme Court.
I wrote about the Alabama case in Racial Gerrymandering’s Questionable Revival<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2601459>, 67 Alabama Law Review 365 (2015) and I am writing a new piece on race and party that addresses these issues again.
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Posted in redistricting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>, Supreme Court<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>, Voting Rights Act<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>


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Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92697-8000
949.824.3072 - office
rhasen at law.uci.edu<mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu>
http://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/
http://electionlawblog.org<http://electionlawblog.org/>
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