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Tag: Voting Rights Act

  • Judges uphold NC districts used in 2024 election, but wait to rule on new map

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    A panel of federal judges rejected a challenge to North Carolina’s 2024 electoral maps, but did not rule on pending claims against the congressional map drawn by Republicans last month.

    A panel of federal judges rejected a challenge to North Carolina’s 2024 electoral maps, but did not rule on pending claims against the congressional map drawn by Republicans last month.


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    RALEIGH

    A panel of federal judges rejected a gerrymandering challenge to North Carolina electoral maps used in the 2024 election, but did not rule on claims against the new Trump-backed map passed by Republicans last month.

    In a 181-page order released Thursday evening, three Republican-appointed judges ruled that advocacy groups which had challenged the maps failed to prove that lawmakers drew new districts “with the discriminatory purpose of minimizing or canceling out the voting potential of Black North Carolinians.”

    Republican lawmakers redrew the state’s legislative and congressional maps in 2023 after the North Carolina Supreme Court issued a ruling that effectively legalized partisan gerrymandering, the practice of drawing an electoral map intended to benefit one political party.

    Advocacy groups, including the North Carolina NAACP, sued over the maps, alleging that they illegally diluted the voting power of Black residents in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act.

    Before judges could rule on those claims, lawmakers passed another new congressional map last month at the request of President Donald Trump, who has asked Republican-led states to create more favorable maps for the GOP ahead of the 2026 midterms.

    That new map was challenged by the same advocacy groups, and judges held a hearing on the claims Wednesday.

    Thursday’s ruling does not take a position on the new map, and is instead limited only to claims from the 2023 redistricting process.

    However, a ruling on the remaining claims is expected to come quickly. Candidate filing for the 2026 election begins on Dec. 1 and maps will need to be finalized before then.

    Related Stories from Raleigh News & Observer

    Kyle Ingram

    The News & Observer

    Kyle Ingram is a politics reporter for the News & Observer. He reports on the legislature, voting rights and more in North Carolina politics. He is a graduate of the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at UNC-Chapel Hill. 

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    Kyle Ingram

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  • Supreme Court might upend Voting Rights Act and help GOP keep control of the House

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    WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court may help the GOP keep control of the House of Representatives next year by clearing the way for Republican-led states to redraw election districts now held by Black Democrats.

    That prospect formed the backdrop on Wednesday as the justices debated the future of the Voting Rights Act in a case from Louisiana.

    The Trump administration’s top courtroom attorney urged he justices to rule that partisan politics, not racial fairness, should guide the drawing election districts for Congress and state legislatures.

    “This court held that race-based affirmative action in higher education must come to an end,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer wrote in his brief. The same is true, he said, for using the Voting Rights Act to draw legislative districts that are likely to elect a Black or Latino candidate.

    Too often, he said, the civil rights law has been “deployed as a form of electoral race-based affirmative action to undo a state’s constitutional pursuit of political ends.”

    The court’s conservatives lean in that direction and sought to limit the use of race for drawing district boundaries. But the five-member majority has not struck down the use of race for drawing district lines.

    But the Trump administration and Louisiana’s Republican leaders argued that now was the time to do so.

    If the court’s conservatives hand down such a ruling in the months ahead, it would permit Republican-led states across the South to redraw the congressional districts of a dozen or more Black Democrats.

    “There’s reason for alarm,” said Harvard law professor Nicholas Stephanopoulous. “The consequences for minority representation would likely be devastating. In particular, states with unified Republican governments would have a green light to flip as many Democratic minority-opportunity districts as possible.”

    Such a ruling would also upend the Voting Rights Act as it had been understood since the 1980s.

    As originally enacted in 1965, the historic measure put the federal government on the side of Blacks in registering to vote and casting ballots.

    But in 1982, Republicans and Democrats in Congress took note that these new Black voters were often shut out of electing anyone to office. White lawmakers could draw maps that put whites in the majority in all or nearly all the districts.

    Seeking a change, Congress amended the law to allow legal challenges when discrimination results in minority voters having “less opportunity … to elect representatives of their choice.”

    In decades after, the Supreme Court and the Justice Department pressed the states, and the South in particular, to draw at least some electoral districts that were likely to elect a Black candidate. These legal challenges turned on evidence that white voters in the state would not support a Black candidate.

    But since he joined the court in 1991, Justice Clarence Thomas has argued that drawing districts based on race is unconstitutional and should be prohibited. Justices Samuel A. Alito, Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett dissented with Thomas two years ago when the court by a 5-4 vote approved a second congressional district in Alabama that elected a Black Democrat.

    Chief Justice John G. Roberts wrote the opinion. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh cast the deciding fifth vote but also said he was open to the argument that “race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.”

    That issue is now before the court in the Louisiana case.

    It has six congressional districts, and about one-third of its population is Black.

    Prior to this decade, the New Orleans area elected a Black representative, and in response to a voting right suit, it was ordered to draw a second district where a Black candidate had a good chance to win.

    But to protect its leading House Republicans — Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise — the state drew a new elongated district that elected Rep. Cleo Fields, a Black Democrat.

    Now the state and the Trump administration argue the court should strike down that district because it was drawn based on race and free the state to replace him with a white Republican.

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    David G. Savage

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  • Supreme Court debate Louisiana redistricting case centering on Voting Rights Act

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    Supreme Court set to hear arguments on pivotal Louisiana redistricting case

    The Supreme Court is reviewing a case involving Louisiana’s congressional map and its implications for racial gerrymandering.

    Updated: 4:54 AM PDT Oct 15, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    The Supreme Court is deliberating a case today that could reshape congressional redistricting nationwide, focusing on racial gerrymandering in Louisiana.States are allowed to redistrict based on party lines, but this case in the Supreme Court deals with gerrymandering along racial lines and could change who you’re voting for. If the Supreme Court justices get rid of Section Two, the last remaining part of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in redistricting, it could upend electoral maps nationwide.At issue is Louisiana’s congressional map, which has two majority Black districts. The state drew a new map in 2022, but civil rights advocates argued in federal court that it violated part of the Voting Rights Act because it only included one majority Black district. They won, and the state redrew the map, but a group claimed it was racist against them. A court agreed, leading to the current Supreme Court case.A ruling in favor of Louisiana could open the door for states with large minority populations, mostly red states in the South, to redraw congressional districts, essentially eliminating majority Black and Latino seats that tend to favor Democrats.”If the court, as I think some people expect, says you can’t use race ever anymore, or if the Voting Rights Act allows you to use race, then that violates the Constitution under the 14th and 15th amendments, then we are basically done with the Voting Rights Act,” American University Washington College of Law Professor Stephen Wermiel said.Once the Supreme Court hears arguments today, a decision will most likely be released in the late spring or early summer.Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:

    WASHINGTON —

    The Supreme Court is deliberating a case today that could reshape congressional redistricting nationwide, focusing on racial gerrymandering in Louisiana.

    States are allowed to redistrict based on party lines, but this case in the Supreme Court deals with gerrymandering along racial lines and could change who you’re voting for.

    If the Supreme Court justices get rid of Section Two, the last remaining part of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in redistricting, it could upend electoral maps nationwide.

    At issue is Louisiana’s congressional map, which has two majority Black districts. The state drew a new map in 2022, but civil rights advocates argued in federal court that it violated part of the Voting Rights Act because it only included one majority Black district. They won, and the state redrew the map, but a group claimed it was racist against them. A court agreed, leading to the current Supreme Court case.

    A ruling in favor of Louisiana could open the door for states with large minority populations, mostly red states in the South, to redraw congressional districts, essentially eliminating majority Black and Latino seats that tend to favor Democrats.

    “If the court, as I think some people expect, says you can’t use race ever anymore, or if the Voting Rights Act allows you to use race, then that violates the Constitution under the 14th and 15th amendments, then we are basically done with the Voting Rights Act,” American University Washington College of Law Professor Stephen Wermiel said.

    Once the Supreme Court hears arguments today, a decision will most likely be released in the late spring or early summer.

    Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:


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  • Redistricting Map May Not Be the Success Story Republicans Think It Is

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    Texas Republicans celebrated a victory last week as the House and Senate approved new congressional districts amid criticism that the lines are racially gerrymandered. But the success of the redistricting effort hinges heavily on whether previous GOP voters will stay true to their party in 2026.

    House Bill 4, introduced by Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, was approved August 20 in an 88-52 vote. During an eight-hour discussion in Austin, Hunter stood firm in his position that although mid-decade redistricting is unusual, it’s not illegal, nor is drawing new boundaries in an effort to gain more GOP congressional seats, which was his intent when he introduced the legislation.

    The Senate adopted the new map along party lines in an 18-11 vote early Saturday morning. Sen. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, was planning a filibuster but Republicans blocked it in a rare procedural motion that ended the debate.

    “The One Big Beautiful Map has passed the Senate and is on its way to my desk, where it will be swiftly signed into law,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement. “I promised we would get this done, and delivered on that promise.”

    University of Houston law professor David Froomkin agreed that a state is entitled under existing federal law to engage in “extreme partisan gerrymandering for partisan advantage,” but it doesn’t appear that’s what’s happening, he said.

    “If the state were in fact doing that, the map would be perfectly legal, but I think there’s strong reason to think that’s not in fact what the state has done,” he said. “They’re invoking that logic, but likely disingenuously. The premise underlying this redistricting plan was that there was a racial problem with the prior map that needed to be corrected.”

    “That’s the position that the Department of Justice took in demanding that the state of Texas engage in this redistricting effort,” he added. “It’s a rationale that the governor accepted as the original justification for a mid-decade redistricting. Republicans backed off of that logic once it became clear that it would pose a legal obstacle to the new map. A court will have to determine whether the new rhetoric that the map is motivated by politics not race is the true motive.”

    The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 2017 Cooper v. Harris case that the North Carolina General Assembly “used race too heavily” in redrawing two Congressional districts following the 2010 Census.

    In modern-day Texas, Republicans originally theorized that the state’s prior congressional maps, approved after the 2020 Census, were racially gerrymandered and in order to resolve that problem, it was necessary to engage in race-conscious redistricting, Froomkin said.

    Democrats were quick to point out that at the time the maps were approved in 2021, Republicans testified under oath that they were “race blind.”

    The 2021 map is being challenged in federal court, with civil rights groups alleging they violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The U.S. Department of Justice was originally among the plaintiffs in that case and withdrew when Donald Trump became president.

    “In fact, the state and the Department of Justice were incorrect to think that the prior map was a racial gerrymander,” Froomkin said, adding that he believes the map approved last week is a racial gerrymander. “To be clear, I also think they’ve violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which is a separate issue but one that no doubt will be litigated.”

    “It’s not just a power grab, it’s an attack on free society,” he added. “What Texas and other states are doing with these gerrymanders is trying to insulate an authoritarian government from democratic accountability.”

    Texas Democrats — bolstered by constituents who oppose the map and party officials including former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — avoided voting on the map for about two weeks, fleeing the state to break quorum. A few Democratic legislators, including Rep. Jolanda Jones, D-Houston, didn’t come back. Those who did voted against the map and vowed to challenge it in court.

    The new Texas map is poised to add five GOP seats in 2026 primaries, an effort to retain President Trump’s narrow majority in Congress. California Gov. Gavin Newsom promptly launched a redistricting effort in his state to add more blue seats and counter the effort in Texas. Under California law, this still has to be approved by voters in November.

    The districts planned for a flip from blue to red are District 9 (held by Rep. Al Green of Houston), District 28 (held by Rep. Henry Cuellar of Laredo), District 32 (held by Rep. Julie Johnson of Farmers Branch), District 34 (held by Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen), and District 35 (held by Rep. Greg Cesar of Austin). At least six other districts were redrawn to improve GOP performance. Almost all of Texas’ 38 districts were altered.

    “Four of the five new districts are majority-minority Hispanic,” Hunter said before last week’s vote in the House. “Each of these newly-drawn districts now trend Republican in political performance. While there’s no guarantee in electorate success, Republicans will now have an opportunity to potentially win these districts.”

    click to enlarge

    The Texas House of Representatives approved new congressional districts on August 20, with Democrats vowing to challenge the map in court.

    Texas Legislative Council

    But the new map doesn’t guarantee Republican victories in the 2026 midterms, Froomkin said.

    “The new map is premised on a guess about the voting behavior of Latino Texans, and that guess might turn out to be wrong,” he said. “The maps will go into effect. The question is, will the people put up with it? We can already see a backlash taking place. The Trump administration is horrifically unpopular. Guesses about how people are going to vote in 2026 based on the 2024 numbers may be misleading.”

    Members of the Texas Majority PAC, which advertises that it is dedicated to electing a Democrat to statewide office, gathered for a Zoom call last week to analyze redistricting data. Katherine Fischer, director of the PAC, said Republicans will almost certainly flip Districts 9 and 32.

    “We think it is possible, though challenging, to hold CD 35,” she said. “We think it is very possible to hold CD 28 and CD 34. Those are the Valley and South Texas ones. We believe that CD 15, which is currently a Republican district, will be the most competitive it’s been since 2020 redistricting and is a potential flip for Democrats.”

    The strategy behind the new map is based on the assumption that Trump’s 2024 numbers are an accurate metric to determine how competitive the districts are, Fischer said, adding that she thinks the Republicans overplayed their hand.

    “[Governor] Abbott was tasked with finding five new seats for Trump, but there are too many Democrats in Texas to gerrymander them away completely,” she said. “The data tells us that Texas Democrats can compete to hold most of these seats, and may have new flip opportunities. We intend to fight for every single seat.”

    Former Texas Sen. Wendy Davis joined the call and said the maps reveal the likelihood that the GOP’s “voter suppression efforts” will backfire. “Communities that Republicans hoped to suppress are energized, and Democrats are ready to turn that energy into real, competitive elections,” she said.

    Froomkin said once Governor Abbott signs the bill into law, the maps will be used for the 2026 midterm elections. No member of Congress loses their seat immediately but some, if not all, of the five Democrats in the seats slated for flips will not seek re-election in their now heavily Republican districts.

    Rep. Al Green has said he could run in Congressional District 18, where a special election is planned in November to fill the seat vacated by Rep. Sylvester Turner’s death earlier this year. Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, Rep. Jolanda Jones, and former Houston City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards are among more than 20 candidates who have filed for the CD 18 seat. Former candidates Corisha Rogers and Rain Eatmon dropped out of the race last week, saying they would endorse Menefee.

    Referencing the fact that the 2021 map is still under review in federal court, Froomkin said such cases take a long time to adjudicate.

    “They involve the presentation of a lot of factual information that takes time to gather,” he said. “I expect that Voting Rights Act challenges to the new map, similarly, will take a lot of time to adjudicate.”

    While the plaintiffs won’t necessarily be just the Democratic lawmakers who fought fiercely against the legislation at the Capitol last week, many of those legislators are likely to be involved and are attorneys who appear prepared to gather technical information about the decomposition of districts and the voting behavior of those who live there.

    Once the new map is approved, the case against the 2021 version doesn’t necessarily become moot just because it’s no longer in effect, Frromkin explained.

    “It could be the case that a court would grant preliminary relief to plaintiffs challenging the new map and say that map can’t immediately go into effect, in which case the old maps, at least for the time being, would still be in effect,” he said.

    Republicans Double Down

    Prior to the passage of the bill, some GOP lawmakers appeared to be frustrated with their party leaders. Governor Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Speaker of the House Dustin Burrows threatened to remove quorum-breaking Democrats from their seats, assess hefty fines, and arrest them. Not much of that has happened, leading some GOP legislators and watchdogs to believe that the party was rolling over for the Dems.

    Letters were issued Friday afternoon notifying Texas House Democrats who fled the state that they’d have to pay about $9,000 each in fines for “impeding the action of the House.”

    Shortly after the Speaker’s opening remarks early last week, the quorum breakers were asked to sign permission slips so a DPS trooper could tail them until the Legislature reconvened a couple of days later. Rep. Nicole Collier, D-Fort Worth, refused and spent two nights in the House of Representatives. At least six other lawmakers joined her on the second night.

    When Collier went into a House bathroom for a Zoom call with Newsom and U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, during the August 20 floor debate, authorities accused her of committing a felony.

    Froomkin, the law professor, said Abbott and other Republicans have made some threats, particularly that of criminal prosecution, that they weren’t authorized to make. And when the July 7 letter came from Trump’s Department of Justice strongly suggesting that Texas redraw its map, Abbott didn’t have to do it, Froomkin said.

    “The governor clearly made a number of threats that were beyond his legal power,” he said. “It seems like those threats were effective. The Democrats returned sooner than a lot of people expected they would, and I think that is likely attributable to the governor’s threats of criminal prosecution, which I found shocking. The suggestion that state officials would use their official powers to persecute members of the opposition simply for taking positions on legislative matters is extremely unusual and disturbing.”

    “It seems like we’re entering a new era in politics in which incumbents try to use every ounce of their power in order to try to maintain their power,” he added. “There’s no doubt that the goal of the new map is straightforwardly to dilute and diminish the political power of communities of color, and it is part of a broader plan to do that on the national stage.”

    But most Republican lawmakers have doubled down on the decision to redistrict, lauding the measure as a historic victory for the right and sharing their endorsements from Trump and Abbott.

    Reps. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, and Cody Vasut, R-Angleton, announced a celebratory dinner toasting the passage of the maps last week, and Cain promptly filed the day after the House vote to run for the newly drawn Congressional District 9.

    Burrows said when the House convened on August 18 that his responsibility now that a quorum was established was to maintain an atmosphere of decorum and respect until “the job is finished.”

    “No one here needs a reminder that the last few weeks have been contentious,” he said, referencing the walkout of at least 50 Democrats in early August. “From this point forward, the rules of engagement are clear. Debate is welcome but personal attacks and name-calling will not be tolerated.”

    Name-calling ensued almost immediately, primarily accusations from Democrats that the bill was racist and that some of its authors and supporters were too.

    Hunter emphasized that the law allows redistricting for political performance. He repeatedly explained that the map was developed by Butler Snow LLP law firm at his direction and became frustrated with several Democratic legislators who questioned him about the process, saying they were permitted to interrupt and talk over him.

    “I’m standing with Republican members,” he said. “What’s wrong with Republicans standing up and stepping up and being honest, which you don’t like? The Supreme Court says we can do political and partisan redistricting. We will not agree on this issue. We will push forward.”

    Rep. Katrina Pierson, R-Rockwall, also took issue with the accusations.

    “You call my voters racist, you call my party racist, but yet we’re expected to follow the rules,” she said. “Well, that double standard ends today. I have traveled all over this country for the better part of a decade and I can tell you that more and more minority voters are voting their values, not their skin color. And many of them are moving to Texas to escape the blue states because their values have been successfully gerrymandered into suppression.”

    click to enlarge

    Rep. Katrina Pierson, R-Rockwall, said the new redistricting map is not racist but reflects the will of the people and the majority party.

    Screenshot

    Pierson further pointed out that Trump won Hispanic voters in Texas. “I get it, you don’t like that,” she said. “In 2024, Democrats lost. President Trump won big. You’re losing at the ballot box but you will not silence the majority in the state of Texas. You can throw your tantrum. You can leave, you can run, and you can ignore the will of the rest of the voters, but it’s honestly time to pick a new narrative. The racist rhetoric is old. News flash: Democrats do not own minorities in Texas.”

    Many Democratic lawmakers allege the redistricting effort involves “packing and cracking,” or widening the GOP advantage by unconstitutionally compressing people of color into some districts while spreading them throughout others to reduce their ability to elect their preferred candidates.

    It’s hard to predict what will happen in a legal battle because the U.S. Supreme Court has “sent some signals that the future of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is uncertain,” Froomkin said.

    “There are two cases before the Supreme Court that put the future of the Voting Rights Act in question,” he said. “In one of them, the court is planning to rule in a few months on the constitutionality of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and a number of experts expect that this court will be hostile to section 2. That will of course dramatically shake up the redistricting process, particularly in southern states like Texas.”

    “In the absence of the Voting Rights Act, southern states would be able to completely gerrymander maps so as to deny minority communities any political representation, as they largely did before 1965,” he added.

    The actions of the federal government in micromanaging state legislatures is unprecedented, the law professor added. “That is another really surprising development,” he said. “The Republican Party used to, at least rhetorically, be a party that embraced federalism. Today, a Republican administration is trying to aggrandize federal power at the expense of states, including by coercing states to participate in the federal executive’s agenda.”

    What’s Next for Special Session No. 2

    Sixty-nine bills were read into the record on August 18 and referred to committees. More followed throughout the week, ranging from THC regulation to STAAR test elimination. Most were aimed at improving emergency preparedness and enhancing youth camp safety standards, a response to the deadly July 4 Hill Country floods. Several have already passed at least one chamber.
    Public hearings were held last week before the Select Committee on Flooding and Disaster Preparedness, at which several parents testified about the loss of their children at Camp Mystic during the Hill Country floods.

    Democratic lawmakers criticized Republicans for not putting flood victims ahead of redistricting. Republicans said they could have passed bills sooner if the Democrats hadn’t fled the state.

    Following the House passage of the redistricting bill, Abbott announced the addition of three more items to the special session agenda: Legislation imposing punishment for legislators who are willfully absent during a session; authorizing the purchase of Ivermectin over the counter; and proposing a groundwater study of East Texas aquifers by the Texas Water Development Board.

    Burrows has said he hopes to finish the second special session by addressing all 22 items on the governor’s agenda before Labor Day weekend.

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    April Towery

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  • California’s lightning-fast push for partisan redistricting reflects Trump’s new America

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    In an evening social media post about a supremely partisan battle that could reshape American political power for generations, President Trump sounded ebullient.

    “Big WIN for the Great State of Texas!!! Everything Passed, on our way to FIVE more Congressional seats and saving your Rights, your Freedoms, and your Country, itself,” Trump wrote, of the nation’s most populous red state pushing a mid-decade redistricting plan designed to win more Republican seats in Congress and protect Trump’s power through the 2026 midterms.

    “Texas never lets us down. Florida, Indiana, and others are looking to do the same thing,” Trump wrote — nodding to a potential proliferation of such efforts across the country.

    The next day, Gov. Gavin Newsom — projecting a fresh swagger as Trump’s chief antagonist on the issue — stood with fellow lawmakers from the nation’s most populous blue state to announce their own legislative success in putting to voters a redrawn congressional map for California that strongly favors Democrats.

    “We got here because the president of the United States is one of the most unpopular presidents in U.S. history,” Newsom said, couching the California effort as defensive rather than offensive. “We got here because he recognizes that he will lose the election, [and that] Congress will go back into the hands of the Democratic Party next November.”

    In the last week, with lightning speed, the nation’s foremost political leaders have jettisoned any pretense of political fairness — any notion of voters being equal or elected representatives reflecting their constituencies — in favor of an all-out partisan war for power that has some politicians and many political observers concerned for the future of American democracy.

    “America is headed towards true authoritarian rule if people do not stand up,” Texas state Rep. Gene Wu, a Democrat from the Houston area, said Friday on a call with reporters.

    The race to redistrict began with Trump, whose approval ratings have plummeted, pressuring Texas to manipulate maps to secure more House seats for Republicans so he wouldn’t face a hostile House majority in the second half of his second term. It escalated when Newsom and other California leaders said they wouldn’t stand idly by and started working to put a new map of their own on the November ballot — formally asking voters to jettison the state’s independent redistricting commission to counter Trump’s gambit in Texas.

    Those two states alone are home to some 70 million Americans, but the fight is hardly limited there. As Trump suggested, other states are also eyeing whether to redraw lines — raising the prospect of a country divided between blue and red power centers more than ever before, and the voice of millions of minority-party voters being all but erased in the halls of Congress.

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom answers questions on Thursday after signing legislation calling for a special election on a redrawn congressional map.

    (Godofredo A. Vásquez / Associated Press)

    Of course, gerrymandering is not new, and already exists in many states across the country. But the bold, unapologetic and bipartisan bent of the latest redistricting race is something new and different, experts said. It is a clear product of Trump’s new America, where political warfare is increasingly untethered to — and unbound by — long-standing political norms, and where leaders of both political parties seem increasingly willing to toss aside pretense and politeness in order to pursue power.

    Trump on the campaign trail promised a new “Golden Age,” and he has long said his goal is to return America to some purportedly greater, more aspirational and proud past. But he has also signaled, repeatedly and with hardly any ambiguity, an intention to manipulate the political system to further empower himself and his fellow Republicans — whether through redistricting, ending mail-in ballots, or other measures aimed at curtailing voter turnout.

    “In four years, you don’t have to vote again,” Trump told a crowd of evangelical Christians a little over a year ago, in the thick of his presidential campaign. “We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”

    ‘No democracy left’

    The redistricting war has dominated political news for weeks now, given its potential implications for reshaping Congress and further emboldening Trump in his second term.

    Sam Wang, president of the Electoral Innovation Lab at Princeton University, has studied gerrymandering for years, but said during the media call with Wu that he has never received more inquiries than in the last few weeks, when his inbox has filled with questions from media around the world.

    Wang said gerrymandering reached a high point more than a decade ago, but had been subsiding due to court battles and state legislatures establishing independent commissions to draw district lines.

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott defends his state's redistricting move while calling California's "a joke."

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott defends his state’s redistricting move while calling California’s “a joke.”

    (Eric Gay / Associated Press)

    Now, however, the efforts of Texas and California are threatening that progress and pushing things “to a new low point,” he said — leaving some voters feeling disenfranchised and Wang worried about further erosion of voter protections under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which he said the conservative Supreme Court may be preparing to weaken.

    Wu said allowing politicians to redraw congressional lines whenever they want in order to “make sure that they never lose” sets a dangerous precedent that will especially disenfranchise minority voters — because “politicians and leaders would no longer listen to the people.”

    “There would be no democracy left,” he said.

    That said, Wu drew a sharp distinction between Texas Republicans unilaterally redrawing maps to their and Trump’s advantage — in part by “hacking” apart minority populations — and California asking voters to counteract that power grab with a new map of their own.

    “California is defending the nation,” he said. “Texas is doing something illegal.”

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday took the opposition position, saying Texas’ new map was constitutional while California’s was “a joke” and likely to be overturned. He also hinted at further efforts in other Republican-led states to add more House seats for the party.

    “Republicans are not finished in the United States,” Abbott said.

    Two legal experts on the call expressed grave concerns with such partisanship — especially in Texas.

    Sara Rohani, assistant counsel with the Legal Defense Fund, or LDF, said her organization has been fighting for decades to ensure that the promises of the Voting Rights Act for Black and other minority groups aren’t infringed upon by unscrupulous and racist political leaders in search of power.

    “Fair representation isn’t optional in this country. It’s the right of all Americans to [have] equal voting power,” she said.

    That said, “voters of color have been excluded” from that promise consistently, both before and after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and “in 2025, it’s clear that our fight for fair maps continues,” Rohani said.

    Major victories have been won in the courts in recent years in states such as Alabama and Louisiana, and those battles are only going to continue, she said. Asked specifically if her group is preparing to sue over Texas’ maps, Rohani demurred — but didn’t back down, saying LDF will get involved “in any jurisdiction where Black voters are being targeted.”

    Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said there are definitely going to be challenges to Texas’ maps.

    By their own admission, Saenz said, Texas lawmakers redrew their maps in 2021 in order to maximize Republican advantage in congressional races — with the only limits being those imposed by the Voting Rights Act. That means in order to gain even more seats now, “they have to violate the Voting Rights Act,” he said.

    Texas Republicans have argued that they are acting in part in response to a warning from the Justice Department that their current maps, from 2021, are unlawful. But Saenz noted that the Justice Department dropped a lawsuit challenging those maps when Trump took office — meaning any threats to sue again are an empty ploy and “clearly orchestrated with one objective: Donald Trump’s objective.”

    The fate of any legal challenges to the redistricting efforts is unclear, in part because gerrymandering has become much harder to challenge in court.

    In 2019, the Supreme Court threw out claims that highly partisan state election maps are unconstitutional. Chief Justice John G. Roberts said such district-by-district line drawing “presents political questions” and there are no reliable “legal standards” for deciding what is fair and just.

    It was not a new view for Roberts.

    In 2006, shortly after he joined the court, the justices rejected a challenge to a mid-decade redistricting engineered by Texas Republicans, but ordered the state — over Roberts’ dissent — to redraw one of its majority-Latino districts to transfer some of its voters to another Latino-leaning district.

    Roberts expressed his frustration at the time, writing that it “is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”

    Some legal experts say the new Texas redistricting could face a legal challenge if Black or Latino lawmakers are in danger of losing their seats. But the Supreme Court conservatives are skeptical of such claims — and have given signs they may shrink the scope of the Voting Rights Act.

    In March, the justices considered a Louisiana case to decide if the state must create a second congressional district that would elect a Black candidate to comply with the Voting Rights Act, and if so, how it should be drawn.

    But the court failed to issue a decision. Instead, on Aug. 1, the court said it would hear further arguments this fall on “whether the state’s intentional creation of a second majority-minority Congressional district” violates the Constitution.

    Justice Clarence Thomas has long argued it is unconstitutional to draw election districts based on racial lines, regardless of the Voting Rights Act, and he may now have a majority that agrees with him.

    If so, such a ruling could squelch discrimination claims from Black and Latino lawmakers in Texas or elsewhere — further clearing the path for partisan gerrymandering.

    Looking ahead

    Given the intensity of the battle and the uncertainty of the related legal challenges, few of America’s top political leaders are thinking to the future. They’re fighting in the present — focused on swaying public perception.

    In a YouTube Live video with thousands of supporters on Thursday, Newsom said Trump “doesn’t believe in the rule of law — he believes in the rule of Don; period, full stop,” and that he hoped it was “dawning on more and more Americans what’s at stake.”

    Newsom said that when Trump “made the phone call to rig the elections to Greg Abbott in Texas,” he expected Democrats to just roll over and take it. In response, he said, Democrats have to stop thinking about “whether or not we should play hardball,” and start focusing on “how we play hardball.”

    On Friday, Newsom said he was “very proud of the Legislature for moving quickly” to counter Texas, and that he is confident voters will support the ballot measure to change the state’s maps despite polls showing a sluggish start to the campaign.

    A UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, conducted for The Times, found 48% of voters said they would cast ballots in favor of temporary gerrymandering efforts, though 20% were undecided.

    Asked if he is encouraging Democratic leaders in other states to revisit their own maps, Newsom said he appreciated both Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signaling that they may be willing to do just that.

    “I do believe that the actions of [the California] Legislature will inspire other legislative leaders to … meet this moment, to save this democracy and to stop this authoritarian and his continued actions to literally vandalize and gut our Constitution and our democratic principles,” Newsom said.

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    Kevin Rector, David G. Savage, Melody Gutierrez, Laura J. Nelson

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  • Whoopi Goldberg Launches Vile Attack On Tim Scott For Denying Systemic Racism – ‘Looney Tune’

    Whoopi Goldberg Launches Vile Attack On Tim Scott For Denying Systemic Racism – ‘Looney Tune’

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    Opinion

    Source: The View YouTube

    On Wednesday’s episode of the ABC talk show “The View,” co-host Whoopi Goldberg launched a truly vile attack on Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), branding him a “looney tune” for denying systemic racism.

    Goldberg Attacks Scott

    Goldberg attacked Scott while she and her co-hosts interviewed Clay Cane, who recently released a book titled, “The Grift: The Downward Spiral of Black Republicans.” 

    “Let’s not forget, he voted against The Voting Rights Act, gutted the George Floyd Policing Act, and came on this very show and denied systemic racism,” Cane said.

    The radically liberal co-host Sunny Hostin responded by claiming that Scott “insulted” her when he appeared on “The View” last year.

    “Well, I was here, too,” Goldberg said before viciously attacking Scott by saying that “he was a Looney Tune.”

    Related: Senator Tim Scott To Serve As Trump Surrogate In Outreach To Black Voters

    Joy Behar Chimes In

    Co-host Joy Behar chimed in to whine that it is difficult for her to watch Scott speak at Donald Trump rallies, adding that he is  “desperate” for power. 

    “What’s sad about Tim Scott is that I think he knows that if he called out the bigotry in his own party versus endorsing a bigot for president, he knows they would throw him out faster than Liz Cheney,” Cane said.

    “It’s pathetic to watch,” Behar continued, going on to note that Scott recently got engaged. “That’s because he wants the job as VP, right? So the engagement was a good way to say, ‘Hey, I’m going to be married. I’m going to be legit. I can be a vice president to Trump.’”

    Related: Tim Scott Won’t Be President, But Will Be a Husband

    Check out this full segment in the video below.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhWxmEJieFE

    Scott Schools ‘The View’ Hosts

    While appearing on “The View” last year, Scott refused to cater to the left-wing narrative of systemic racism in the U.S.

    “One of the reasons why I’m on the show is because of the comments that were made frankly on this show that the only way for a young African-American kid to be successful in this country is to be the exception and not the rule. That’s a dangerous, offensive, disgusting message to send to our young people today that the only way to succeed is by being the exception,” Scott said at the time, according to Fox News.

    Not stopping there, Scott proceeded to boast about the African-American success in the U.S., pointing out the record low unemployment rate among African Americans.

    “Progress in America is palpable, it can be measured in generations,” he said. “I look back at the fact that my grandfather, born in 1921 in Salley, South Carolina, when he was on a sidewalk, a White person was coming — he had to step off and not make eye contact.”

    “That man believed then, with some doubt now, in the goodness of America, because he believed that faith in God, faith in himself, and faith in what the future could hold for his kids, would unleash opportunities in ways that you cannot imagine,” Scott added. “So, what I’m suggesting is that yesterday’s exception is today’s rule.”

    Check out his full appearance on “The View” in the video below.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09Rh4y0NCjI

    There’s nobody that shameless liberals like Goldberg despise more than a black conservative, as the existence of someone like Scott completely destroys their narrative that the Republican Party is full of racists. Goldberg can bash Scott all that she wants to, but if she really wants to see a “looney tune,” all she has to do is look in the mirror.

    The Political Insider is facing imminent closure.
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    An Ivy leaguer, proud conservative millennial, history lover, writer, and lifelong New Englander, James specializes in the intersection of… More about James Conrad

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    James Conrad

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  • Video: The Latest Challenge to the Voting Rights Act

    Video: The Latest Challenge to the Voting Rights Act

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    OPEN: A court recent ruling recently could deliver a death blow to the Voting Rights Act – a law that has protected Black Americans’ political power the voting rights of minority communities for six decades./////A federal appeals court issued a ruling last month on an Arkansas redistricting case that could drastically weaken the Voting Rights Act, a law that has protected minority communities’ political power for almost six decades. ALT: A recent court ruling could make it harder for people to challenge state’s racially discriminatory voting practices. ALT : The Voting Rights Act has been the single most …. but a recent court ruling could ALT: As voting rights have become a flash issue, a recent court ruling in Arkansas could….. The ruling by the 8th Circuit appeals court, which is almost certain to be appealed to the Supreme Court, would effectively bar private citizens and civil rights groups from suing under section 2 of the law. To understand that, we need to take a quick look back at the law itself… Background on the Voting Rights Act The Voting Rights Act was signed into law in 1965, and was one of the most significant achievements of the civil rights movement. The law rolled back discriminatory Jim Crow laws that were meant to disenfranchise minority communities. Since then, it has evolved, and it’s been under attack almost since it was passed. Why Section 2 is so important This latest ruling affects Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which allows private citizens (and civil rights groups) to fight racially discriminatory voting practices by states. Over the years, dozens of lawsuits have used Section 2 to challenge heavily gerrymandered redistricting maps. But in 2021, when voters in Pulaski County, Arkansas challenged a redistricting that diluted the voting power of Black voters Judge Rudofsky, a Trump-appointed federal judge, ruled that “only the attorney general of the United States may bring suit” to enforce Section 2. That decision, which has since been upheld by the 8th Circuit Court, takes the power to file lawsuits to enforce the Voting Rights Act away from individual voters. Legal experts and commentators say this is a very unusual interpretation of the Voting Rights Act. In his dissent, Chief Circuit Judge Lavenski Smith noted that at least 182 successful Section 2 cases have been brought in the past 40 years, only 15 of which were brought solely by the US Justice Department./// Over the past 40 years, more than 90 percent of successful Section 2 cases were brought by individuals or civil rights organizations///Over the past four decades, fewer than 10 percent of successful section 2 cases were brought by the US DOJ The Arkansas ruling is almost certain to be appealed to the Supreme Court. [Several legal experts I spoke with said tktktkt] But for now, it only affects/applies to states in the 8th Circuit’s jurisdiction — Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. Could it impact any of these states in a way with national resonance? Whether or not the Supreme Court upholds this Eighth Circuit ruling, we’re almost certain to see other challenges to voting rights in the coming months.

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  • Civil Rights Undone

    Civil Rights Undone

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    In late 2020, even as the instigators of insurrection were marshaling their followers to travel to Washington, D.C., another kind of coup—a quieter one—was in the works. On December 21, in one of his departing acts as attorney general, Bill Barr submitted a proposed rule change to the White House. The change would eliminate the venerable standard used by the Justice Department to handle discrimination cases, known as “disparate impact.” The memo was quickly overshadowed by the events of January 6, and, in the chaotic final days of Donald Trump’s presidency, it was never implemented. But Barr’s proposal represented perhaps the most aggressive step the administration took in its effort to dismantle existing civil-rights law. Should Trump return to power, he would surely attempt to see the effort through.

    Explore the January/February 2024 Issue

    Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

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    Since the legislative victories of the civil-rights movement in the 1960s, legal and civil rights for people on the margins have tended to expand. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 were followed by voting provisions for Indigenous people and non-English speakers, a Supreme Court guarantee of the right to abortion, increased protections for people with disabilities, and formal recognition of same-sex marriage. The trend mostly continued under presidents of both parties—until Trump. Though his administration could be bumbling, the president’s actions matched his rhetoric when it came to eroding civil-rights enforcement.

    From the March 2021 issue: American democracy is only 55 years old—and hanging by a thread

    Under Trump, the Justice Department abandoned its active protection of voting rights. The Environmental Protection Agency ignored civil-rights complaints. The Department of Housing and Urban Development scaled back investigations into housing discrimination. Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court, for their part, have whittled away at landmark civil-rights legislation and presided over the end of affirmative action.

    In a second term, the most effective way for Trump to continue rolling back protections would be to dismantle disparate-impact theory. Under the theory, the federal government can prohibit discriminatory practices not just in instances of malicious and provable bigotry, but also in cases where a party’s actions unintentionally affect a class of marginalized people disproportionately.

    The theory is important because discrimination can be perpetuated without ill intent; even seemingly benign or neutral policies can perpetuate a legacy of bias, or create new inequities. But disparate impact is also essential because landlords, business owners, and municipal officials who do wish to discriminate have learned how to operate without expressing overt bigotry. Under disparate impact, the government’s burden is not to prove that these actors intended to discriminate, only that their actions resulted in discrimination.

    For decades, lawyers have invoked disparate impact as a means of fighting discrimination. The standard has been applied across the federal government. After the housing crisis of 2008, the DOJ brought a series of lawsuits against banks that had charged higher mortgage rates and fees to minority borrowers, winning hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements from the lenders. In 2015, the DOJ released a damning report on the practices of the police department in Ferguson, Missouri, after an 18-year-old Black man, Michael Brown, was shot and killed by a police officer. Disparate impact was mentioned at least 30 times in the report, including in its main takeaway: “African Americans experience disparate impact in nearly every aspect of Ferguson’s law enforcement system.”

    Adam Serwer: Trump is making it easier to get away with discrimination

    Many conservatives have long been suspicious of disparate impact. The most principled objections center on the claims that it invites government overreach and inefficiency, that it impedes state and local policy development, and that it always entails some degree of ghost-chasing—in a country as unequal as America, discerning what exactly contributes to a disparate outcome can be difficult.

    But these philosophical and practical objections to the theory have always served to disguise a more visceral disdain. Many conservatives simply believe that ensuring equality is not a legitimate federal priority. In the Trump era, as the Republican Party has embraced white nationalism, its leaders have been emboldened to abandon the guise. They edge closer to the line once held by the architects of Jim Crow: Equality is undesirable because people are not equals; some of us might not even be people.

    Trump himself has always had a preternatural gift for identifying and channeling grievance; white backlash against civil-rights legislation was one of the major forces behind his advancement to the presidency, and that backlash can be traced directly to disdain for civil-rights legislation and enforcement. Once Trump was in office, one of his early targets was HUD. In 2020, the department finalized a rule that demolished its discriminatory-effect standard, which had been the basis for enforcement at the department for at least 40 years. Trump’s HUD secretary, Ben Carson, said that the move would spur efficiency at the local level without undermining the department’s antidiscrimination work. But Carson has long been a skeptic of desegregation; during his 2016 presidential campaign, he described desegregation efforts in cities as “failed socialist experiments.” Ultimately, Carson’s attempt to undermine the discrimination standard was stymied by lawsuits. But the cause of fighting bias suffered nevertheless. In 2020, at the end of Carson’s tenure, the number of secretary-initiated complaints had gone from several dozen in 2015 to three.

    Trump did serious damage to disparate impact as president; there’s little question that he would finish the job if given another chance. A second Trump administration could go beyond simply abandoning the theory, perhaps even bringing lawsuits seeking to declare the entire concept unconstitutional. Trump could thus attack civil-rights law from both sides, sabotaging the government’s capability to adjudicate cases while also arguing that it should not have that capability in the first place. If this two-pronged strategy succeeds, it will be difficult for any future administration to undo the changes. With today’s conservative-dominated judiciary and high levels of political polarization, any substantive changes Trump makes to civil-rights enforcement could effectively become permanent.

    Without disparate impact, the DOJ would lose its primary tool for addressing brutality in police departments, and current efforts to finally enforce environmental laws in communities of color and hold cities accountable for creating slums in Black and Latino neighborhoods would be stalled. Given the damage that has already been done by the courts, there is a future—perhaps a likely future—in which the remaining foundations of the civil-rights era are undone. If Trump were to win in 2024, he would see the victory as a mandate to tear everything down now.

    This article appears in the January/February 2024 print edition with the headline “Civil Rights Undone.”

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    Vann R. Newkirk II

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  • Federal court strikes down Alabama congressional map after legislature snubbed Supreme Court | CNN Politics

    Federal court strikes down Alabama congressional map after legislature snubbed Supreme Court | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal court blocked a newly drawn Alabama congressional map on Tuesday because it didn’t create a second majority-Black district as the Supreme Court had ordered earlier this year.

    In a unanimous decision from a three-judge panel, which had overseen the case before it reached the Supreme Court, the judges wrote that they were “disturbed” by Alabama’s actions in the case.

    The state had snubbed the Supreme Court’s order – a surprise 5-4 decision in June – that the maps should be redrawn. White voters currently make up the majority in six of the state’s seven congressional districts, although 27% of the state’s population is Black.

    “We are deeply troubled that the State enacted a map that the State readily admits does not provide the remedy we said federal law requires,” wrote the judges, two of whom were appointed by former President Donald Trump.

    Alabama officials on Tuesday filed notice that they are appealing the ruling.

    “While we are disappointed in today’s decision, we strongly believe that the Legislature’s map complies with the Voting Rights Act and the recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court,” the office of Alabama Attorney General Steven Marshall said in a statement. “We intend to promptly seek review from the Supreme Court to ensure that the State can use its lawful congressional districts in 2024 and beyond.”

    Alabama officials also asked the three-judge court to freeze its opinion invalidating the congressional map but said they will formally ask the Supreme Court for a stay on Thursday.

    This redistricting battle – and separate, pending litigation over congressional maps in states such as Georgia and Florida – could determine which party controls the US House of Representatives after next year’s elections. Republicans currently hold a razor-thin majority in the chamber.

    The three federal judges overseeing the Alabama case on Tuesday ordered a special master to submit three proposed maps that would create a second Black-majority district by September 25.

    The panel wrote that it was “not aware of any other case” in which a state legislature had responded to being ordered to a draw map with a second majority-minority district by creating one that the state itself admitted didn’t create the required district.

    “The law requires the creation of an additional district that affords Black Alabamians, like everyone else, a fair and reasonable opportunity to elect candidates of their choice,” and Alabama’s new map, they wrote, “plainly fails to do so.”

    JaTaune Bosby Gilchrist, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, which has been fighting the case, praised the ruling: “Elected officials ignored their responsibilities and chose to violate our democracy. We hope the court’s special master helps steward a process that ensures a fair map that Black Alabamians and our state deserve.”

    This summer, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, had affirmed an earlier decision by the three-judge panel and ordered the state to redraw congressional maps to include a second majority-Black district or “something quite close to it.”

    The Supreme Court’s surprise decision in Alabama – coming after the right-leaning high court has chipped away at other parts of the Voting Rights Act in recent years – has given fresh hope to voting rights activists and Democrats that they could prevail in challenges to other maps they view as discriminating against minorities.

    But the new map approved by Alabama’s Republican-dominated legislature – and signed into law by GOP Gov. Kay Ivey – in July created only one majority-Black district and boosted the share of Black voters in a second district from roughly 30% to nearly 40%.

    The pending cases center on whether GOP state legislators drew congressional maps after the 2020 census that weakened the power of Black voters in violation of Section 2 of the historic Voting Rights Act.

    Republicans control all statewide offices in Alabama and all but one congressional seat. The single Black-majority congressional district is represented by Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell, the state’s first Black woman elected to Congress.

    Alabama officials have argued that the map as redrawn by state lawmakers was aimed at maintaining traditional guidelines for congressional redistricting, such as keeping together communities of interest. And they have signaled that they hope to sway one of the Supreme Court justices who sided with the majority in June.

    The state’s briefs before the three-judge panel referenced a concurring opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh – one of the two conservatives who sided with the liberal justices on the high court to vote against the original Alabama map – that questioned whether “race-based redistricting” can “extend indefinitely into the future.”

    The lower-court judges weren’t convinced by the state’s arguments.

    They wrote that after reviewing the concurrence, as well as a part of the Supreme Court’s ruling which Kavanaugh didn’t join, “We do not understand either of those writings as undermining any aspect of the Supreme Court’s affirmance; if they did, the Court would not have affirmed the injunction.”

    The judges also rejected Alabama’s argument that drawing a second Black-majority district would unconstitutionally constitute “affirmative action in redistricting.”

    “Unlike affirmative action in the admissions programs the Supreme Court analyzed in [this year’s affirmative action case], which was expressly aimed at achieving balanced racial outcomes in the makeup of the universities’ student bodies, the Voting Rights Act guarantees only ‘equality of opportunity, not a guarantee of electoral success for minority-preferred candidates of whatever race,’” the panel wrote.

    “The Voting Rights Act does not provide a leg up for Black voters – it merely prevents them from being kept down with regard to what is arguably the most ‘fundamental political right,’ in that it is ‘preservative of all rights’ – the right to vote.”

    Earlier, in a letter to state lawmakers, Marshall had argued that a separate Supreme Court ruling in June – after the high court’s Alabama redistricting decision came down – that ended affirmative action in college admissions meant that using a map in which “race predominates” would open up the state to claims that it was violating the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Another ‘radical’ change to the Voting Rights Act could reach the Supreme Court | CNN Politics

    Another ‘radical’ change to the Voting Rights Act could reach the Supreme Court | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal appeals court appears open to further shrinking the scope of the Voting Rights Act in a case that could lead to another major Supreme Court showdown over voting rights.

    The 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals at a hearing on Wednesday considered whether private entities – and not just the US Justice Department – can bring lawsuits under a key provision of the law. Two of the three members of the appellate panel asked questions suggesting they were leaning against the idea that the provision, known as Section 2, could be enforced with private lawsuits.

    If those seeking a narrowing of the VRA are successful, it would significantly diminish the use of the law to challenge ballot regulations and redistricting maps that are said to be racially discriminatory.

    A vast majority of the cases that are brought under the Voting Rights Act – which prohibits election rules that have the intent or effect of discriminating on the basis of race – are brought by private plaintiffs, with the Justice Department facing strained resources and other considerations that limit the number of VRA cases it files to, at most, a few each year.

    Last year, however, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Arkansas – running counter to decades of legal practice – said that private parties do not have the ability to sue under the Section 2.

    During arguments Wednesday about whether the judge’s ruling should be upheld, Circuit Judges Raymond Gruender and David Stras questioned the attorney arguing in favor of a so-called private cause of action whether the parts of Supreme Court and 8th Circuit opinions that her clients were leaning on were “dicta,” i.e. statements that are not binding on lower courts.

    “I am dubious whether that is a holding,” Gruender, an appointee of former President George. W. Bush, said of an 8th Circuit case that ACLU attorney Sophia Lin Lakin argued pointed to the more robust interpretation of VRA enforcement.

    Stras, a Trump-appointee, grilled Lakin on more recent cases from the Supreme Court that scaled back private causes of action in other laws.

    A decision that blocked private parties’ path to court under the VRA would be a “radical” one, said David Becker, an alum of the Justice Department’s voting section who now leads the Center for Election Innovation & Research.

    “It absolutely means it’s more likely that there will be potential partisan mischief that could negatively impact the voters who are protected by the Voting Rights Act,” Becker, who signed a friend-of-the court brief favoring the broader interpretation, told CNN.

    A decision from the 8th Circuit is unlikely to come for at least several weeks.

    The February 2022 ruling by US District Judge Lee Rudofsky that private parties could not sue under Section 2 is believed to be a first-of-its-kind decision. It emerged from a VRA challenge brought by the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP to Arkansas’ state House map.

    Critics of Rudofsky’s ruling noted that it flew in the face of decades of judicial practice – including in multiple Supreme Court cases – where courts considered and decided Section 2 cases brought by private parties. They point to a 1996 Supreme Court case where five justices sanctioned the practice. They also stress that, since it was passed in 1965, the Voting Rights Act has been reauthorized and amended numerous times, and never once has Congress weighed in to say that courts were getting it wrong by hearing Section 2 lawsuits brought by private individuals and organizations.

    However, those in favor of reading the VRA more narrowly have seized on a concurrence by Justice Neil Gorsuch in a 2021 VRA case that called it an “open question” whether the provision has a private cause of action. Only Justice Clarence Thomas signed on to Gorsuch’s concurrence, but it provided Rudofsky with a jumping off point to conclude the answer was no.

    The office of Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, who is defending Rudofsky’s ruling, did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. Her briefs argue that Congress intended only for attorney general to bring Section 2 lawsuits and there is a lack of textual support in the Voting Rights Act for a private cause of action for the provision.

    “Despite what the practice has been, when you look at the text of the statute there is a real question as to whether there is a private right of action,” Jason Torchinsky – a GOP election law attorney who represented Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton in a friend-of-the-court brief arguing against a private cause of action – told CNN.

    At Wednesday’s 8th Circuit hearing, Circuit Judge Lavenski Smith – a George W. Bush appointee who is the chief judge of the appellate court – showed the most skepticism of Arkansas’ arguments against a private cause of action, though Stras also pushed back on some of the more sweeping claims made by Arkansas Solicitor General Nicholas Bronni.

    Those against a private cause of action argue the current interpretation of the law has spawned an ever-increasing amount of private VRA litigation that is overburdening election administrators and injecting chaos into their planning.

    “Courts have essentially assumed that there is this private right of action,” Honest Election Project executive director Jason Snead told CNN.

    “But it’s never actually been determined that there is, and in the absence of the expressed decision by Congress to create a private right of action and put it in the text of the law, courts are not empowered to create one,” said Snead, whose group favors stricter voting laws and filed a friend of the court brief supporting Arkansas.

    Without a private cause of action, enforcement of the Voting Rights Act would shrink drastically. Over the last four decades, private litigation has consistently made up the bulk of the successful Section 2 lawsuits, according to briefs filed in the case, and the number of Section 2 cases brought by the DOJ has trended downward, with the Trump administration bringing just one new lawsuit under the provision.

    Even as the judiciary – and particularly the US Supreme Court – was yanked further to the right under Trump’s makeover of the federal bench, many legal experts are viewing Arkansas’ arguments as a longshot. That the argument is being put forward is nonetheless a sign of how far conservative opponents of the VRA are willing to push the envelope in this legal environment, according to Rick Hasen, an election law professor at UCLA School of Law.

    “In any fair reading of the Voting Rights Act, this argument is an easy loser, but we’ll see,” Hasen told CNN. “I don’t count anything out these days.”

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • John Roberts’s Long Game

    John Roberts’s Long Game

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    The Supreme Court delivered appalling decisions in June—on abortion, guns, and environmental regulation—but the conservative supermajority is poised to strike an even greater blow against American democracy. The justices now have the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in their sights. On October 4, the second day of the new term, they will hear Alabama’s challenge to a federal district court’s finding that the state has to create a new majority-Black congressional district. This is no ordinary case of statutory interpretation. At stake is a crowning achievement of the civil-rights era, and the meaning and measure of racial equality in the hands of a Supreme Court reshaped by Donald Trump.

    Explore the October 2022 Issue

    Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

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    Back in February, in a 5–4 vote, the Court’s conservative majority temporarily blocked the district court’s order; the majority didn’t even deign to issue an opinion explaining its reasoning. The justices’ audacious move freed Alabama to hold November’s congressional elections in districts that the lower court had declared invalid. This went too far even for one of the Voting Rights Act’s best-known critics, Chief Justice John Roberts, who dissented. To resurrect a pungent phrase, his colleagues out-segged him. But it would be a mistake to read his dissent as a sign that he has abandoned a project that has obsessed him since his days as a young lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department.

    The most likely explanation for his dissent was that he flinched at the optics: Alabama’s request for a stay had arrived on the Court’s “shadow docket.” Every court maintains an emergency docket to handle matters that can’t wait for a full hearing. But during the Trump years, the Supreme Court exploited this device to hand victories to the president without a full briefing, public argument, or even advance notice.

    Although Alabama is 27 percent Black, only one of its seven congressional districts—the one that includes Birmingham—has a Black majority, despite large Black populations concentrated in Mobile and in the “Black Belt” counties that stretch across the state. It may have struck the chief justice that using the shadow docket to preserve this status quo in defiance of the lower court’s decision was an unappealing step, and an unnecessary one at that.

    When the justices decide the case, Merrill v. Milligan, this term, they will be free not only to overturn the lower court’s decision, but to rewrite the rules governing how the Voting Rights Act applies to similar cases anywhere in the country. Roberts conceded in his dissent that the district court had correctly followed precedent. He also made it clear that, in his view, the precedent is overdue for revision. As we saw in June, overturning precedent is no obstacle to a majority ready and willing to use its power to get what it wants.

    From the March 2021 issue: American democracy is only 55 years old—and hanging by a thread

    The justices have framed the question for this round as “whether the State of Alabama’s 2021 redistricting plan for its seven seats in the United States House of Representatives violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.” But the real question, the perilous one underlying that seemingly benign formulation, is this: Is Section 2 itself constitutional? And in the dangerous space forced open by that question, the young John Roberts and the chief justice of the United States meet.

    Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits any electoral practice that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” A violation has occurred if members of a racial or language minority group “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” Section 2 is about the allocation of political power. It takes aim at “vote dilution,” defined as dispersing a cohesive minority group among several districts or lumping members of the group into one district. “Cracking” and “packing” seem to be what was happening in Alabama.

    A 1986 decision, Thornburg v. Gingles, laid out a road map for how to prove such a case, requiring plaintiffs to demonstrate that the minority group was “sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority.” That test is central to the Alabama case. Obviously, applying that test requires an awareness of race. How can line-drawers, or courts, know whether a minority group’s vote is being diluted without knowing where the members of the group live, and how many of them there are?

    And yet Alabama argued that, by taking race into account at all, the district court indulged in “the noxious idea that redistricting begins and ends with racial considerations.” The creation of a new majority-Black district, the state claimed, was therefore nothing more than a “racial gerrymander,” a phrase that Alabama’s lawyers used multiple times in the application for a stay. Unless the justices blocked the order, the state warned, “Alabamians will suffer the constitutional harm of being assigned to racially segregated districts, irreconcilable with the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fifteenth Amendment, and the VRA as initially conceived.” Section 2 is supposed to be a “shield against racial discrimination,” the state’s formal brief reads. “It is not a sword to perpetuate it.”

    These sentences merit parsing with care. The words invite a dramatic conclusion: that the heart of the Voting Rights Act, as interpreted by the Supreme Court a generation ago and as applied many times since, is unconstitutional.

    What Alabama is saying, essentially, is that any effort to eradicate racial discrimination is itself racial discrimination. But how can that be? How can we know when a Voting Rights Act remedy is called for unless we can take account of race? Alabama is trying to turn the statute inside out and upside down. The district court, in rejecting the state’s argument, observed that it was “obvious” that its logic would “preclude any plaintiff from ever stating a Section Two claim.”

    That conundrum will be obvious to the Supreme Court as well. But for the conservative justices, the problem is not how to satisfy the Gingles test but rather the test itself. Roberts made that point in his dissent from the stay. “While the District Court cannot be faulted for its application of Gingles,” he wrote, “it is fair to say that Gingles and its progeny have engendered considerable disagreement and uncertainty.” He then quoted Justice Anthony Kennedy, who warned in a 1994 vote-dilution case that “placing undue emphasis upon proportionality risks defeating the goals underlying the Voting Rights Act.”

    Proportionality is a loaded word. Section 2 explicitly disclaims the goal of proportional representation: “Nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population.” But the justices who decided Thornburg v. Gingles remained worried about the specter of proportionality. While nominally unanimous, they produced four separate opinions. They were clearly grappling with whether the decision would hardwire a proportionality standard—in effect, a quota—into a statute that purported to reject it.

    Read: The Supreme Court needs to show its work

    That concern has never fully been put to rest. The statute remains unfinished business, like the fight over affirmative action, which the conservatives on the Court have been trying to finish off for decades. It’s not by chance that voting rights and race-conscious university admissions have both ended up on the docket this term. Why wouldn’t they, when their final unraveling is within reach?

    The same law firm—Consovoy McCarthy—is representing Alabama and the plaintiffs in two cases the Court will soon hear challenging any consideration of race in admission to Harvard and the University of North Carolina. The firm’s founding partner William Consovoy, a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, is one of the right wing’s go-to lawyers; he defended President Donald Trump in his efforts to shield various records from disclosure in 2019. The firm’s two lawyers on the Alabama brief represent the rising generation: One clerked for Thomas and the other for Roberts.

    Consovoy’s case against Harvard failed in two lower federal courts, but those defeats were a warm-up act. Now comes the real show. The first line of his petition to the Court is breathtaking for its brash confidence—and its cheekiness: “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” Instantly recognizable, this is a quotation from one of Roberts’s earliest Supreme Court opinions, in which he dissented from the majority’s finding of vote dilution in Texas, in a Section 2 case.

    Although the Court decided Gingles 19 years before Roberts became chief justice, the case was no abstraction to him. Early in his career, he was deeply involved in a monumental political battle that ultimately led to the decision.

    In 1980, the Supreme Court decided City of Mobile v. Bolden. At issue was the validity of a common form of municipal government in the South, a commission consisting of three members who were elected at large rather than from individual districts. At-large systems all but guaranteed that even cities with sizable Black populations would have no Black members in elected positions. And indeed, no Black candidate had ever been elected to the city government in Mobile, Alabama, where racial polarization ran so deep that even a white candidate viewed as sympathetic to the interests of the Black community was doomed to lose.

    The plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit, representing all Black citizens of Mobile, claimed that the at-large system violated Section 2 and the equal-protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment. In a 6–3 decision, the Supreme Court made short work of both claims. Section 2, Justice Potter Stewart wrote for the majority, was no more than a statutory mirror of the Fifteenth Amendment, which bars racial discrimination in voting and which the Court interpreted as applying only to intentional discrimination. The Fifteenth Amendment “does not entail the right to have Negro candidates elected,” Stewart observed gratuitously. The Fourteenth Amendment was also a lost cause; four years earlier, in Washington v. Davis, the Court had ruled for the first time that proof of intentional discrimination was necessary to establish a violation of the equal-protection clause. The fact that a policy disproportionately harmed or disempowered one racial group, in other words, was not enough.

    After this devastating ruling, civil-rights activists turned to Congress. The Supreme Court had administered something close to a death blow to Section 2, and only an amendment making clear that the law covered discriminatory outcomes as well as discriminatory purpose could save it. The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives responded quickly and produced such a bill. John Roberts, 26 years old and having recently completed a clerkship for then-Justice William Rehnquist, was working as a special assistant to President Ronald Reagan’s attorney general. His portfolio included voting rights, and in a series of memos that came to light soon after his 2005 Supreme Court nomination, Roberts argued vigorously against the passage of the proposed amendment.

    In one memo, he wrote: “Violations of Section 2 should not be made too easy to prove, since they provide a basis for the most intrusive interference imaginable by federal courts into state and local processes.” The proposed “effects test,” he wrote, “would establish essentially a quota system for electoral politics” that was “inconsistent with this Nation’s history of popular sovereignty.”

    Ultimately, the Senate passed the bill and Reagan signed it. But the fight wasn’t over. To the contrary—first under Chief Justice Warren Burger, then under Rehnquist, and finally under Roberts himself, the Supreme Court went assiduously about disengaging the federal government from the civil-rights revolution. Busing for integration ended at the school-district line. White contractors were deemed the victims of city policies aimed at guaranteeing minority-owned businesses a share of the work. The Court weakened the part of the Fourteenth Amendment that gives Congress the power to enforce its guarantees.

    No one in a position of power has done more for this cause than John Roberts. One of his first major opinions, the Parents Involved school-integration case in 2007, declared his determination to get government out of the business of counting people by race. (Roberts actually borrowed the most famous line of that opinion—“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race”—from another federal judge, without attribution.)

    David Litt: A court without precedent

    In Shelby County v. Holder, Roberts’s majority opinion essentially killed Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the highly successful “preclearance” rule under which jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination in voting had to get permission from the Justice Department or a federal court before making any change in voting procedures. The South had done so well in correcting the sins of its past, Roberts wrote, that the law as applied could no longer be justified.

    The impact of the Shelby County decision was stunning. Within hours, Greg Abbott, then the attorney general of Texas and now the state’s governor, announced that a stringent voter-ID law that had been blocked under Section 5 the previous summer would go into effect “immediately.” That was just the beginning. States across the South and the Southwest have been quick to exploit their new freedom from the federal scrutiny that once would have deterred changes in voting hours, ID requirements, and other seemingly neutral moves with disproportionate effects on minority voters.

    The end of Section 2 could be even more damaging because, in many respects, it is the more powerful provision. It applies nationwide, and does not require, as Section 5 did, proof that the challenged policy has made things worse for minority voters, only that such voters have been deprived of an opportunity that should have been theirs. The prospect that Section 2 may now follow Section 5 into oblivion feels at once scarcely believable and sadly inevitable. If this comes to pass, it will be almost impossible to prove that a state has gerrymandered its electoral districts to disempower minority voters, or for a court to order that its map be redrawn.

    Look again at that curious phrase from Alabama’s lawyers, the one describing the district-court order as “irreconcilable with the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fifteenth Amendment, and the VRA as initially conceived.” What is “initially conceived” supposed to mean? It can only be a reference to that 1981 fight over the meaning of Section 2, when the young John Roberts argued that it should not be “too easy to prove” that a state had violated the voting rights of its citizens. The Alabama lawyers are speaking directly to Chief Justice Roberts, telling him that the law has been constitutionally problematic for decades, and that now, in this very case, in this very year, he finally has the chance to make it right.

    This article appears in the October 2022 print edition with the headline “John Roberts’s Long Game.”

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    Linda Greenhouse

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  • Voting rights advocates in the South emboldened by Supreme Court win | CNN Politics

    Voting rights advocates in the South emboldened by Supreme Court win | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    With a sense of relief that the conservative Supreme Court did not use a major Alabama redistricting case to further gut the Voting Rights Act, civil rights advocates and election attorneys are preparing for a new flood of redistricting litigation lawsuits challenging political maps – especially in the South – they say discriminate against minorities.

    In the 5-4 case decided Thursday, Alabama must now draw a second majority-Black US congressional district after Republicans were sued by African American voters over a redistricting plan for the 27% percent Black state that made White voters the majority in six of the seven districts.

    The six White majority districts are represented by Republicans; the Black majority district is represented by a Democrat.

    “I don’t think it’s going to stop Republicans from drawing racist maps,” Aunna Dennis, executive director of the voting rights group Common Cause, told CNN. “But I think that this empowers those of us pushing back and fighting that.”

    The majority opinion – written by Chief Justice John Roberts, who was joined by the court’s three liberals and, in most parts, by Justice Brett Kavanaugh – effectively maintained the status quo around how courts should approach Voting Rights Act lawsuits that allege a legislative map discriminates by race.

    By letting old precedent around the Voting Rights Act to stand in the case, called Allen v. Milligan, the Supreme Court has likely emboldened voting rights advocates to bring cases they previously thought would have been doomed.

    Several election law attorneys and voting rights advocates have suggested to CNN they believe the decision could have a ripple effect across the South, in states like Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas where cases claiming Section 2 violations are already working through the courts.

    According to the Democracy Docket, a liberal-leaning voting rights media platform that tracks election litigation, there are 31 active federal cases involving Voting Rights Act redistricting claims similar to those in the Alabama case.

    “I suspect that there are a number of states with lawyers who were considering filing a lawsuit similar to the Milligan lawsuit, but they held off because the prospects of how everyone thought Milligan would go were so dim. But now, you’re going to have a whole range of suits filed,” said Alabama voting rights attorney J.S. “Chris” Christie, who filed one of the two lawsuits that were before the justices in the Milligan case.

    “Some of those will win, and some of them won’t. All redistricting suits are not the same,” Christie said, noting that Kavanaugh did not join an important part of Roberts’ opinion, depriving that section of a majority.

    Still, he said, “Lawyers who file these types of lawsuits are going to be encouraged and are going to pursue those cases aggressively, knowing that the Voting Rights Act precedents are there.”

    The ruling was a shock. The right-leaning high court, sometimes in decisions penned by Roberts himself, had been on a spree of landmark rulings over the last several years that had whittled down the scope of the Voting Rights Act. And in the flurry of emergency litigation last year ahead of the 2022 midterms, the Supreme Court repeatedly put on hold lower court rulings – including in the Alabama case – that would have ordered the redrawing of political maps ahead of last year’s elections, helping Republicans to narrowly reclaim the US House.

    That meant that, at least in Alabama, the election was carried out under a redistricting plan that the Supreme Court has now affirmed to be likely unlawful.

    “The fact remains that the Supreme Court previously allowed the same map that they just determined unconstitutionally, and systemically diluted Black votes be used in the 2022 election,” the Congressional Black Caucus said in a statement.

    In Alabama, lower courts said early last year that the state’s congressional map likely violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting Black voting power. The courts ordered it redrawn in a way that was expected to produce a second majority-Black district, which would have shifted the partisan makeup of the state’s congressional delegation from 6-1 to 5-2.

    But, in February 2022, the Supreme Court put those decisions on hold until the justices could hear and decide the case themselves.

    At the heart of the dispute in the Alabama case was the way that, under longstanding Supreme Court precedent, race was used to determine if a map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting procedures “not equally open to participation by members” of a protected class, like racial minorities. Alabama was putting forward an argument for a supposedly “race-blind” approach to VRA redistricting compliance, that if endorsed, would have defanged the provision.

    Already, the Supreme Court led by Roberts had gutted a separate provision of the VRA that required certain jurisdictions (including Alabama and other states in the South) with a history of racially discriminatory voting policies to get federal approval for the maps that they drew.

    The Supreme Court’s emergency move last year to allow the Republican-drawn Alabama map to stay in place had cascading effects in lawsuits across the country.

    Some cases, like a challenge brought to Alabama’s state legislative redistricting plan, were put on hold.

    In a Georgia case that concerned both the congressional and state legislative redistricting plans, a federal judge said that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in at least some of the districts they were challenging, but he declined to grant the preliminary injunction, in part citing the Supreme Court’s emergency order.

    The Supreme Court, meanwhile, also froze a lower court order in a legal challenge brought against Louisiana’s congressional map that made similar arguments as the Milligan case, as Louisiana legislators had drawn just one majority-Black district of the six districts in the 33% percent Black state.

    The justices paused the case, where a federal judge was preparing to redraw the Louisiana map if the Republican lawmakers refused to do so, and said they were taking up the lawsuit but putting it on hold until the Milligan case was decided.

    Now the challengers’ lawyers in that case are anticipating that the Supreme Court will send it back to lower courts, where they were poised to prevail under the approach to VRA redistricting cases that the justices have now left undisturbed.

    Cases in Texas, Mississippi and elsewhere that inched ahead while the Milligan case was pending will go to trial without the threat that the challengers would need to prove their case under a drastically different Section 2 standard.

    “If anything, we no longer need to make adjustments that we had potentially been preparing for because the state of the law remains unchanged,” said Texas Civil Rights Project attorney Sarah Chen, whose group is involved in several challenges to Texas maps, including a lawsuit over Galveston County’s redistricting plan.

    “The Supreme Court did not endorse the radical changes proposed by Alabama in their arguments, the same changes that are also endorsed by opposing counsel in this Galveston redistricting matter,” Chen added.

    While challenges to statewide maps are what get the most national attention, the ruling’s effect on how the VRA is applied to local races like county commission elections and school board seats “is really going to impact voters’ everyday lives,” according to Christie, the Alabama voting rights attorney, who said that Thursday’s opinion will be “huge” in a newly filed challenge to a county commission map in the state.

    “Attorneys who file these types of lawsuits are going to be encouraged to pursue these cases knowing that the VRA precedent is there,” he said.

    Even before they get into a courtroom, voting rights advocates see the Milligan ruling as valuable for discouraging state and local map drawers from diminishing the political power of communities of color, as it squelched expectations that the Supreme Court was about to make VRA challenges more difficult to bring.

    “I am disappointed in today’s Supreme Court opinion but it remains the commitment of the Secretary of State’s Office to comply with all applicable election laws,” Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen, the defendant in the Alabama case, said in a statement after the ruling.

    In North Carolina, voting rights advocates had been reeling from a major defeat with the state Supreme Court recently ruling that North Carolina courts couldn’t police partisan gerrymandering. (Litigation over the state’s congressional plan is also before the Supreme Court in a legal dispute that does not concern the Voting Rights Act). They are finding a silver lining in that, thanks to Thursday’s ruling, the GOP legislators will be redrawing North Carolina’s political maps knowing Voting Rights Act protections for minority voters remain in force.

    “We would hope that they would really take this decision to heart that they would make a genuine good faith effort to comply with Section 2,” said Hilary Harris Klein, the senior counsel for voting rights with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

    Thursday’s ruling, said Deuel Ross, the deputy director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, “puts state legislatures and local redistricting bodies on notice that the Voting Rights Act is here to stay and if they deny communities of color the representation they deserve, that they will face lawsuits.”

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