[EL] Amicus brief in Rucho v. Common Cause

[Chin, Andrew]

As you know, Rucho v. Common Cause will be argued before the Supreme Court on March 26. I have written an amicus brief that must be filed this Friday morning, March 8. I can take signatories up to 6 p.m. EST this Thursday, March 7.

My brief, to be titled "Brief of __ Election Law, Scientific Evidence, and Empirical Legal Scholars as Amici Curiae in Support of Appellees," focuses on the emergence of extreme outlier analysis based on computer-generated samples of redistricting plans as a methodology for proving the predicates of an equal protection challenge to partisan gerrymandering.

After reviewing the robustness and inferential power of Jonathan Mattingly's district-specific evidence and Jowei Chen's residence-specific evidence of individual vote dilution, I explain why Mattingly's and Chen's analyses overcome the analytical infirmities of the tests rejected in Bandemer, Vieth and LULAC. Specifically, the analyses serve to exclude four alternative explanations for partisan disparities: (1) the inherent disproportionality of winner-take all; (2) cross-election variation; (3) legitimate redistricting objectives (including partisan considerations); and (4) political geography. I conclude by arguing that both packing and cracking, as evidenced by a district's consistently atypical partisan performance, dilute the votes of an opposing party's voters in the district.

For those of you who are familiar with the amicus brief I filed in Gill v. Whitford (https://campaignlegal.org/document/gill-v-whitford-us-supreme-court-amicus-brief-44-election-law-and-legal-scholars), the Rucho brief is similar in flavor (highlighting the objective vs. constraint distinction, clarifying the analytical framework around the record evidence, etc.).

I apologize for the short time frame. I have been pulling several all-nighters to complete this work.

If you would like to consider signing on to this brief, please email me (chin at unc.edu) ASAP for a copy.

Thank you!
Andrew Chin

--
Andrew Chin
Professor
University of North Carolina School of Law
160 Ridge Road, CB #3380
Chapel Hill, 27599-3380
(office) 919-962-4116
(text)   919-651-6187

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