Petitions of the day

Issue: (1) Whether a state violates the requirement of one person, one vote by enacting a state legislative redistricting plan that results in large and unnecessary population deviations for local legislative delegations that exercise general governing authority over counties; and (2) whether Alabama’s legislative redistricting plans unconstitutionally classify black voters by race by intentionally packing them in districts designed to maintain supermajority percentages produced when 2010 census data are applied to the 2001 majority-black districts.

Issue: (1) Whether Alabama’s effort to redraw the lines of each majority-black district to have the same black population as it would have using 2010 census data as applied to the former district lines, when combined with the state’s new goal of significantly reducing population deviation among districts, amounted to an unconstitutional racial quota and racial gerrymandering that is subject to strict scrutiny and that was not justified by the putative interest of complying with the non-retrogression aspect of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act; and whether these plaintiffs have standing to bring such a constitutional claim; and (2) whether aspects of the state’s map also violated both the purpose and results tests of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment, through the systematic dilution of minority voting strength and by the elimination of certain majority-minority districts.