Facts of the case

After the 2020 census, Alabama created a redistricting plan for its seven seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. One of the districts in the plan is a majority-Black district. Registered voters and several organizations challenged the map, arguing that the state had illegally packed Black voters into a single district while dividing other clusters of Black voters across multiple districts. The challengers alleged that the map effectively minimizes the number of districts in which Black voters can elect their chosen candidates, in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bans racial discrimination in voting policies.

A three-judge district court agreed with the challengers that the map likely violated Section 2 of the VRA, granting a preliminary injunction that ordered the state to draw a new map. Alabama asked the U.S. Supreme Court to freeze the district court’s injunction, which the Court did by a 5-4 decision pending a merits decision.

Question

Does Alabama’s 2021 redistricting plan for its seven U.S. House seats violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act?

Conclusion

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• 5–4 DECISION FOR MILLIGAN
  MAJORITY OPINION BY JOHN G. ROBERTS, JR. Alabama’s 2021 redistricting plan for its seven seats in the U.S. House of Representatives likely violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The district court correctly applied binding Supreme Court precedent to conclude that Alabama’s redistricting map likely violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion of the Court.

The Court’s decision in Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986) sets out a three-part framework for evaluating claims brought under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. First, the plaintiffs must prove that the minority group is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a reasonably configured district (measured by criteria such as contiguity and compactness). Second, the plaintiffs must show that the minority group is politically cohesive. Third, the plaintiffs must show that under the totality of the circumstances, the political process is not “equally open” to minority voters.

The majority applied that three-part framework to the facts in the record and agreed with the district court that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their challenge. The plaintiffs submitted maps demonstrating the traditional districting criteria, and the district court found “no serious dispute” that Black voters are politically cohesive or that the challenged districts’ white majority consistently defeated Black voters’ preferred candidates.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the majority opinion except for a discussion of the difference between race-consciousness and race-predominance. He concurred separately to emphasize and clarify four additional points.

Justice Clarence Thomas authored a dissenting opinion, in which Justice Neil Gorsuch joined in full, and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Samuel Alito joined in part. Justice Thomas argued that Section 2 of the VRA does not require Alabama to redraw its congressional districts so that Black voters can control a number of seats proportional to Black voters in its population.

Justice Alito authored a dissenting opinion in which Justice Gorsuch joined arguing that the majority’s understanding of Gingles—specifically its understanding of the phrase “reasonably configured” within the context of the first precondition—is flawed, and that a correct understanding would lead to a different result in this case.

Source: Allen v Milligan / Oyez.org

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“Allen v. Milligan.” Oyez, www.oyez.org/cases/2022/21-1086. Accessed 8 Jun. 2024.

During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the prospect of communist subversion at home and abroad seemed frighteningly real to many people in the United States. These fears came to define–and, in some cases, corrode–the era’s political culture. For many Americans, the most enduring symbol of this “Red Scare” was Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin.

Senator McCarthy spent almost five years trying in vain to expose communists and other left-wing “loyalty risks” in the U.S. government. In the hyper-suspicious atmosphere of the Cold War, insinuations of disloyalty were enough to convince many Americans that their government was packed with traitors and spies. McCarthy’s accusations were so intimidating that few people dared to speak out against him. It was not until he attacked the Army in 1954 that his actions earned him the censure of the U.S. Senate.

Source: history.com

  American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin.

He designed about 1,000 structures and is considered the most influential architect of his time.

He became the leader of a style known as the Prairie School featuring houses with low-pitched roofs and extended lines that blend into the landscape.

He once wrote, “No house should ever be on any hill or on anything. It should be of the hill, belonging to it, so hill and house could live together, each the happier for the other.”

GRISWOLD v. CONNECTICUT(1965)

Things we cannot forget

No. 496

Argued: Decided: June 7, 1965

June 7, 1965 – The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Connecticut law banning contraception. In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court guaranteed the right to privacy, including freedom from government intrusion into matters of birth control.

Appellants, the Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and its medical director, a licensed physician, were convicted as accessories for giving married persons information and medical advice on how to prevent conception and, following examination, prescribing a contraceptive device or material for the wife’s use. A Connecticut statute makes it a crime for any person to use any drug or article to prevent conception. Appellants claimed that the accessory statute as applied violated the Fourteenth Amendment. An intermediate appellate court and the State’s highest court affirmed the judgment. Held:

151 Conn. 544, 200 A. 2d 479, reversed.

Thomas I. Emerson argued the cause for appellants. With him on the briefs was Catherine G. Roraback.

Joseph B. Clark argued the cause for appellee. With him on the brief was Julius Maretz.

Briefs of amici curiae, urging reversal, were filed by Whitney North Seymour and Eleanor M. Fox for Dr. John M. Adams et al.; by Morris L. Ernst, Harriet F. Pilpel and Nancy F. Wechsler for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc.; by Alfred L. Scanlon for the Catholic Council on Civil Liberties, and by Rhoda H. Karpatkin, Melvin L. Wulf and Jerome E. Caplan for the American Civil Liberties Union et al. [381 U.S. 479, 480]  

MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court.

Appellant Griswold is Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut. Appellant Buxton is a licensed physician and a professor at the Yale Medical School who served as Medical Director for the League at its Center in New Haven – a center open and operating from November 1 to November 10, 1961, when appellants were arrested.

They gave information, instruction, and medical advice to married persons as to the means of preventing conception. They examined the wife and prescribed the best contraceptive device or material for her use. Fees were usually charged, although some couples were serviced free.

The statutes whose constitutionality is involved in this appeal are 53-32 and 54-196 of the General Statutes of Connecticut (1958 rev.). The former provides:

Section 54-196 provides:

The appellants were found guilty as accessories and fined $100 each, against the claim that the accessory statute as so applied violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The Appellate Division of the Circuit Court affirmed. The Supreme Court of Errors affirmed that judgment. 151 Conn. 544, 200 A. 2d 479. We noted probable jurisdiction. 379 U.S. 926 . [381 U.S. 479, 481] 

We think that appellants have standing to raise the constitutional rights of the married people with whom they had a professional relationship. Tileston v. Ullman, 318 U.S. 44 , is different, for there the plaintiff seeking to represent others asked for a declaratory judgment. In that situation we thought that the requirements of standing should be strict, lest the standards of “case or controversy” in Article III of the Constitution become blurred. Here those doubts are removed by reason of a criminal conviction for serving married couples in violation of an aiding-and-abetting statute. Certainly the accessory should have standing to assert that the offense which he is charged with assisting is not, or cannot constitutionally be, a crime.

Source: The History Place caselaw.findlaw.com