NEW ORLEANS — Distinct minority groups cannot join together in coalitions to argue that their votes are diminished in redistricting cases under the Voting Rights Act, a divided federal appeals court ruled Thursday, acknowledging that it has set back years of precedent.
It was a case of redistribution Galveston CountyTexas, Texas, where black and Latino groups united to protest district maps drawn by the county commission. A federal district judge rejected the maps, saying they undermined minority power. A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals initially upheld the ruling before the full court ordered a retrial, resulting in a 12-6 decision Thursday.
Writing for the majority, Judge Edith Jones said such challenges by minority coalitions are “inconsistent” with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and are not supported by Supreme Court precedent. to the Supreme Court.
“Nowhere does Section 2 indicate that two minority groups can join forces to pursue a vote suppression claim,” said Jones, who was nominated to the court by former President Ronald Reagan. “To the contrary, the statute defines the subject of a vote dilution claim as a “class,” in the singular, not the plural.”
Jones was joined in the lawsuit by 11 other Republican presidential candidates. Five members nominated by Democratic presidents and one nominated by a Republican president were different. The 5th Circuit hears cases from federal district courts in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
“Today’s majority finally invalidates the Voting Rights Act this circuit, flattening the trail of four decades of en banc precedent,” said dissenting Judge Dana Douglas, who was nominated to the court by President Joe Biden. His dissent noted that Galveston County marks the nation’s June 1865 celebration, when Union soldiers told enslaved blacks in Galveston they were free.
“To reach its conclusion, the majority must reject well-established methods of statutory interpretation, jumping through hoops to find exceptions,” Douglas wrote.