Page:Allen v. Milligan.pdf/3

Syllabus

voters consistently prefer different candidates” and where minority voters are submerged in a majority voting population that “regularly defeat[s]” their choices. Ibid.

To prove a §2 violation under Gingles, plaintiffs must satisfy three “preconditions.” Id., at 50. First, the “minority group must be sufficiently large and [geographically] compact to constitute a majority in a reasonably configured district.” Wisconsin Legislature v. Wisconsin Elections Comm’n, 595 U. S. ___, ___ (per curiam). “Second, the minority group must be able to show that it is politically cohesive.” Gingles, 478 U. S., at 51. And third, “the minority must be able to demonstrate that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it … to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate.” Ibid. A plaintiff who demonstrates the three preconditions must then show, under the “totality of circumstances,” that the challenged political process is not “equally open” to minority voters. Id., at 45–46. The totality of circumstances inquiry recognizes that application of the Gingles factors is fact dependent and requires courts to conduct “an intensely local appraisal” of the electoral mechanism at issue, as well as a “searching practical evaluation of the past and present reality.” Id., at 79. Congress has not disturbed the Court’s understanding of §2 as Gingles construed it nearly 40 years ago. Pp. 9–11.

(2) The extensive record in these cases supports the District Court’s conclusion that plaintiffs’ §2 claim was likely to succeed under Gingles. As to the first Gingles precondition, the District Court correctly found that black voters could constitute a majority in a second district that was “reasonably configured.” The plaintiffs adduced eleven illustrative districting maps that Alabama could enact, at least one of which contained two majority-black districts that comported with traditional districting criteria. With respect to the compactness criteria, for example, the District Court explained that the maps submitted by one expert “perform[ed] generally better on average than” did HB1, and contained no “bizarre shapes, or any other obvious irregularities.” Plaintiffs’ maps contained equal populations, were contiguous, and respected existing political subdivisions. Indeed, some of plaintiffs’ proposed maps split the same (or even fewer) county lines than the State’s.

The Court finds unpersuasive the State’s argument that plaintiffs’ maps were not reasonably configured because they failed to keep together the Gulf Coast region. Even if that region is a traditional community of interest, the District Court found the evidence insufficient to sustain Alabama’s argument that no legitimate reason could exist to split it. Moreover, the District Court found that plaintiffs’ maps were reasonably configured because they joined together a different community of interest called the Black Belt—a community with a high