WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court refused on Tuesday to block the use of a Republican-drawn voting map in Galveston County, Texas despite a federal judge’s finding that it violated the Voting Rights Act.
Black Democratic voters in the state asked the high court for emergency action to prevent a Fifth Circuit ruling forcing the county to use the map in upcoming elections despite a federal judge’s determination that they were discriminatory.
The majority of the court did not explain their ruling.
Justice Elena Kagan was joined by her fellow Democratic appointees, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in dissent. Kagan rebuked the Fifth Circuit’s interference, finding that the appeals court had overstepped its authority.
“In imposing a different map, acknowledged to violate current law — on the theory that the circuit might someday change that law — the court of appeals went far beyond its proper authority,” the Barack Obama appointee wrote.
Kagan said the Fifth Circuit had disrupted the status quo by pausing the use of a lawful map in favor of a map found to be unlawful.
“The Fifth Circuit’s stay itself disrupted the status quo — an election map concededly lawful under circuit precedent and nearly identical to the maps that have governed the election of Galveston County’s commissioners for decades,” Kagan wrote.
In 2021, the Republican-led County Commissioners Court eliminated the sole Black and Latino-dominant precinct when enacting a new redistricting map. Galveston County is predominantly white and Republican but Black and Latino voters in the area lean Democratic. The dismantled precinct had been led by Stephen Holmes, the county’s only Black Democratic commissioner, for 24 years.
Black community activists were joined by the Department of Justice, local NAACP branches, and the League of United Latin American Citizens Council in claiming the new map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices that discriminate based on race.
Donald Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown ruled that the map was discriminatory and ordered a redraw. A panel on the Fifth Circuit unanimously affirmed, but then paused Brown’s ruling for an en banc poll.
The ruling created confusion and county commissioners defending the map turned to the Supreme Court, asking to pause the panel’s unanimous affirmation of Brown’s ruling even though the appeals court had already put remedial mapmaking on hold.
Before the justices could even unravel the question before them, the Fifth Circuit granted an en banc review of the ruling and clarified that the administrative stay blocking map remediation had been lifted.
The lower court moved to put an alternative map into effect, but the Fifth Circuit stepped in again. Citing Purcell — a doctrine that prevents courts from changing voting maps close to elections — the appeals court said it was too late to implement the remedial map.
The activists returned to the Supreme Court claiming it was wrong to force the county to use the contested map when compliant maps were available.
“Map 1 accounts for all current incumbents and its use will maintain the status quo for voters because it is a least-change plan based on a decades-old configuration of the commissioner precincts,” Hilary Harris Klein, an attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice representing the activists, wrote. “By contrast, the 2021 enacted plan that defendants desire would effectively ‘extinguish[] the Black and Latino communities’ voice on [the] commissioners court’ and ‘shut [them] out of the process altogether.’”
Galveston County voters opposed to the 2021 map claim it was enacted under “mean-spirited” circumstances.
“It would be a grave injustice to allow such an egregious, demonstrably harmful plan to proceed based on misguided speculation of overturning longstanding precedent,” Klein wrote.
The commissioners are challenging the activists' ability to bring the suit under Section 2, claiming that two distinct minority groups cannot aggregate to raise a Voting Rights Act claim.
“Such claims are unsupported by Section 2 and necessarily subordinate one minority group’s voice to that of another’s, risking loss of each group’s unique identity in support of a larger political goal — a problem identified by the Fifth Circuit panel in their recently vacated opinion,” Joseph Russo Jr., an attorney with Greer Herz representing the commissioners, wrote.
The Campaign Legal Center, which represents voters in the case, said the Supreme Court's decision not to block the Fifth Circuit's ruling was disappointing but reaffirmed its commitment to fight for Black and Latino voters in Galveston County.
“Today, the Supreme Court decided to force Galveston County’s Black and Latino voters to vote in 2024 under a discriminatory map already deemed illegal, ‘mean-spirited,’ and ‘egregious’ by a federal judge,” Mark Gaber, senior director of redistricting at Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement. “This is a historic miscarriage of justice for communities that have faced decades of discrimination."
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