Opinion of the Court
the maps they produce yield different benchmark results? How are courts to decide?
Alabama does not say; it offers no rule or standard for determining which of these choices are better than others. Nothing in §2 provides an answer either. In 1982, the computerized mapmaking software that Alabama contends plaintiffs must use to demonstrate an (unspecified) level of deviation did not even exist. See, e.g., J. Chen & N. Stephanopoulos, The Race-Blind Future of Voting Rights, 130 Yale L. J. 862, 881–882 (2021) (Chen & Stephanopoulos). And neither the text of §2 nor the fraught debate that produced it suggests that “equal access” to the fundamental right of voting turns on computer simulations that are technically complicated, expensive to produce, and available to “[o]nly a small cadre of university researchers [that] have the resources and expertise to run” them. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 28 (citing Chen & Stephanopoulos 882–884).[1]
One final point bears mentioning. Throughout these cases, Alabama has repeatedly emphasized that HB1 cannot have violated §2 because none of plaintiffs’ two million odd maps contained more than one majority-minority district. See, e.g., Brief for Alabama 1, 23, 30, 31, 54–56, 70, 79. The point is that two million is a very big number and that sheer volume matters. But as elsewhere, Alabama misconceives the math project that it expects courts to oversee. A brief submitted by three computational redistricting experts explains that the number of possible districting maps in Alabama is at least in the “trillion trillions.” Redistricting Brief 6, n. 7. Another publication reports that
- ↑ None of this is to suggest that algorithmic mapmaking is categorically irrelevant in voting rights cases. Instead, we note only that, in light of the difficulties discussed above, courts should exercise caution before treating results produced by algorithms as all but dispositive of a §2 claim. And in evaluating algorithmic evidence more generally in this context, courts should be attentive to the concerns we have discussed.
