Eddie Jackson, et al. v. Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, et al.

Questions presented

SCOTUS records

1. Whether the Equal Protection Clause and the First Amendment prohibit States from redrawing lawful districting plans in the middle of the decade, for the sole purpose of maximizing partisan advantage.
2. Whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act permits a State to destroy a district effectively controlled by African-American voters, merely because it is impossible to draw a district in which African-Americans constitute an absolute mathematical majority of the population.
3. Whether, under Bush v. Vera, 517 U.S. 952 (1996), a bizarre-looking congressional district, which was intentionally drawn as a majority-Latino district by connecting two far-flung pockets of dense urban population with a 300-mile-long rural "land bridge," may escape invalidation as a racial gerrymander because drawing a compact majority- Latino district would have required the mapmakers to compromise their political goal of maximizing Republican seats elsewhere in the State.

Opinion summary

Etalia.ai summary of the majority opinion

This case involved a challenge to the congressional redistricting plan enacted by Texas in 2003, which was led by then-Governor Rick Perry. The plaintiffs argued that the redistricting plan constituted an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander and violated both the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. They claimed that it diluted minority voting strength and unfairly favored one political party over another. The Supreme Court reviewed whether such claims were justiciable under existing legal standards for determining when partisan gerrymandering violates constitutional rights.