Reply Brief — Greg Abbott, Governor of Texas, et al., Appellants v. Shannon Perez, et al.

Supreme Court briefDec 4, 2017

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No. 17-586

In the Supreme Court of the United States

GREG ABBOTT, ET AL, A PPELLANTS ,

SHANNON PEREZ, ET AL .

ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS

REPLY SUPPORTING

JURISDICTIONAL STATEMENT

PAUL D. CLEMENT

ERIN E. MURPHY

KEN PAXTON

Attorney General of Texas

KIRKLAND & ELLIS LLP

655 Fifteenth Street, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20005

JEFFREY C. MATEER

First Assistant

Attorney General

SCOTT A. KELLER

Solicitor General

Counsel of Record

MATTHEW H. FREDERICK

Deputy Solicitor General

MICHAEL P. MURPHY

ANDREW B. DAVIS

Assistant Solicitors General

OFFICE OF THE

ATTORNEY GENERAL

P.O. Box 12548 (MC 059)

Austin, Texas 78711-2548

scott.keller@oag.texas.gov

(512) 936-1700

T A B LE O F C O N T E N T S

Page

This Court has jurisdiction to review the district

court’s order. .................................................................1

II. The Legislature did not engage in intentional

discrimination when it enacted the courtordered plan as its own. ...............................................3

III. Districts 27 and 35 were not infected with any

discriminatory “taint.” .................................................8

A. There was no vote dilution in CD27. ...................8

B. CD35 was not racially gerrymandered. ............11

Conclusion ...........................................................................13

TABLE OF AUTHORITES

Cases:

Bartlett v. Strickland,

556 U.S. 1 (2009) ........................................................... 11

Bethune-Hill v. Va. State Bd. of Elections,

137 S. Ct. 788 (2017) ............................................... 10, 12

Carson v. Am. Brands, Inc.,

450 U.S. 79 (1981) ........................................................... 2

Cooper v. Harris,

137 S. Ct. 1455 (2017) ..................................................... 2

Gunn v. Univ. Comm. to End the War in Viet

Nam, 399 U.S. 383 (1970) .............................................. 2

Hunter v. Underwood,

471 U.S. 222 (1985) ......................................................... 7

Johnson v. De Grandy,

512 U.S. 997 (1994) ....................................................... 10

(I)

Cases—Continued:

LULAC v. Perry,

548 U.S. 399 (2006) ................................................... 9, 10

Miller v. Johnson,

515 U.S. 900 (1995) ................................................... 8, 11

Perry v. Perez,

565 U.S. 388 (2012) (per curiam)............................... 4, 5

Pers. Adm’r of Mass. v. Feeney,

442 U.S. 256 (1979) ......................................................... 8

Thornburg v. Gingles,

478 U.S. 30 (1986) ......................................................... 12

Statutes:

28 U.S.C.

§1253 ................................................................................ 2

§1292(a)(1) ....................................................................... 2

The plaintiffs’ effort to repackage the district court’s

decision only highlights the district court’s grave legal

and factual errors. This Court should deny the plaintiffs’ motion and note probable jurisdiction or summarily reverse.

I. This Court Has Jurisdiction to Review the District Court’s Order.

The plaintiffs do not seriously dispute that the district court’s order invalidating Plan C235 had the practical effect of precluding its use in the 2018 elections.

Nor could they, as the district court held that CD27 and

CD35 “violate § 2 and the Fourteenth Amendment,”

and that those violations “must be remedied.” J.S. App.

118a. It made clear that if the Legislature did not immediately redraw the districts, the court would—and

would do so in time for the 2018 elections. After all, the

court would not have needed to put the Governor on a

72-hour deadline and otherwise rush to redraw the map

if it had not already determined that the existing map

could not be used in 2018. Indeed, the plaintiffs themselves implicitly concede that the State has been enjoined from using Plan C235 by urging this Court to

“remand to the district court in time for implementation

of a remedy for the 2018 election cycle.” Mot. 4.

The plaintiffs nonetheless claim that this Court

lacks jurisdiction because the district court has not yet

issued a replacement for the map it enjoined. The plaintiffs confuse whether the court’s order is its final order

in the case with whether it is an injunction. An injunction does not have to definitively resolve the case; it just

has to prevent the appealing party from doing some(1)

thing.1 That, the district court’s order plainly does. Unlike Gunn v. University Committee to End the War in

Viet Nam, 399 U.S. 383 (1970) (cited at Mot. 16), there

is no question what “was to be enjoined” or “against

whom” the injunction would run, id. at 388. The district

court’s order is clear: it prevents Texas from using Plan

C235 in the 2018 elections because the court found that

CD27 and CD35 violate the Constitution.

This Court routinely reviews orders blocking a State

from using its existing districts. See, e.g., Cooper v.

Harris, 137 S. Ct. 1455 (2017); Gill v. Whitford, No. 161161 (U.S.). That review is consistent with this Court’s

longstanding view that appellate jurisdiction over injunctions turns on the “practical effect” of the lower

court’s order, not its form or use of magic words. Carson v. Am. Brands, Inc., 450 U.S. 79, 83 (1981). That

Carson interpreted §1292(a)(1), rather than §1253, does

not matter. Because §1292(a)(1) and §1253 use materially identical language to vest jurisdiction over “orders”

“granting” an “injunction,” Carson’s reasoning applies

to both. This is especially so given that both provisions—not just §1292(a)(1), see Mot. 17—are interpreted narrowly. See Carson, 450 U.S. at 84 (“[W]e have

construed the statute narrowly.”). Far from expanding

Carson, then, requiring magic words under §1253 would

The plaintiffs’ argument that “a request for submission of

proposed remedial plans,” is not an appealable order, Mot.

18, makes the same mistake. Of course that would not

typically be an appealable order, because it would be neither a final order nor an injunction.

artificially restrict Carson and the jurisdiction that

Congress has conferred on this Court.

II. The 2013 Legislature Did Not Engage in Intentional Discrimination When It Enacted the

Court-Ordered Plan as Its Own.

On the merits, the plaintiffs attack a strawman.

They repeatedly insist that the 2013 Legislature’s decision to enact the district court’s remedial map did not

“immunize” Plan C235 from judicial review. Defendants

have never suggested otherwise. Defendants have argued only that the 2013 Legislature’s decision to repeal

the 2011 map and replace it with the district court’s remedial map is the relevant decision for purposes of determining the Legislature’s intent. And the 2013 decision was exactly what it purported to be: a good-faith

effort to comply with the Constitution and the VRA,

bring costly and protracted litigation over the 2011 map

to an end, and establish permanent congressional districts for the decade. The plaintiffs’ fabricated tale of

nefarious intent has no basis in reality, and it willfully

ignores the Legislature’s good-faith effort to address

the potential infirmities that the district court had identified.

To be sure, when the Legislature adopted the courtimposed plan as its own, it certainly “assumed the risk”

that districts in Plan C235 “might not withstand full

scrutiny,” Mot. 23, on claims against that plan, and the

district court was free to consider such claims. But Article III did not permit the court to hold onto moot

claims against the never-implemented 2011 plan in an

effort to give the plaintiffs an advantage in their attack

on the 2013 plan. J.S. App. 348a (Smith, J., dissenting)

(“Article III contains no exception . . . that allows us to

resurrect dead claims in order to make it easier for

plaintiffs to pursue live ones.”). Indeed, the plaintiffs

notably do not even respond to defendants’ argument

that the district court’s adjudication of the moot challenges to the 2011 plan was an impermissible advisory

opinion. In all events, nothing in this Court’s precedents

permitted the district court to hold the 2013 Legislature

responsible for wrongs that it believed (albeit erroneously) the 2011 Legislature committed.

The plaintiffs’ contrary contentions are a study in

revisionist history. They first attempt to avoid the district court’s incredible conclusion that the Legislature

engaged in intentional discrimination by adopting the

court’s own remedial map by claiming that the 2013

Legislature “simply repeal[ed] and reenact[ed]” the

map enacted by the 2011 Legislature. Mot. 19-20. That

contention blinks reality. The 2013 Legislature repealed

the 2011 map and replaced it with a new remedial map

imposed by the district court and designed to remedy

identified problems and comply with the VRA, the Constitution, and this Court’s instructions in Perry v. Perez,

565 U.S. 388 (2012) (per curiam). That court-ordered

remedial map preserved some of the lines from the 2011

plan, but it also substantially amended that plan in

many respects. And it altered and preserved lines in

accordance with this Court’s mandate to “draw interim

maps that do not violate the Constitution or the Voting

Rights Act.” Id. The 2013 Legislature thus no more

“simply repeal[ed] and reenact[ed]” the 2011 plan than

the district court did when it imposed Plan C235.

The plaintiffs’ effort to recast the Legislature’s

adoption of the court-ordered remedial plan as a sinister plot to discriminate against minority voters likewise

has no basis in reality. Following this Court’s mandate

to “draw interim maps that do not violate the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act,” Perez, 565 U.S. at 396,

the district court did not redraw CD27 because it concluded that it likely did not intentionally dilute minority

voting strength and did not redraw CD35 because it

concluded that it likely was not a racial gerrymander.

See J.S. App. at 408a-415a, 417a-423a. And the 2013

Legislature embraced Plan C235 as its own precisely

because the district court had concluded that Plan C235

likely complied with the Constitution and the VRA. To

be sure, that determination was a preliminary one and

did not render the 2013 map immune from challenge.

But the district court’s preliminary assessment certainly gave the Legislature a good-faith basis to believe that

adopting Plan C235 as its own would achieve compliance with the Constitution and the VRA.

That is particularly true given that the legal standards applied by the district court were more generous

to plaintiffs than the requirements for a final judgment.

To the extent it considered intentional-discrimination

claims under VRA §5, the court applied a permissive

“not insubstantial” standard. J.S. App. 396a. The remaining claims were considered under the standard for

preliminary injunctions, J.S. App. 415a, 423a, which requires only a showing that the plaintiff is likely to suc-

ceed, not that it will actually do so. The Legislature

thus adopted Plan C235 only after the district court determined that plaintiffs’ challenges to CD27 and CD35

did not even meet those lenient standards. If repealing

a challenged redistricting plan and replacing it with a

remedial map imposed by the very court presiding over

the redistricting litigation—after the court concludes

that challenges to that map are unlikely to succeed—is

evidence of intentional discrimination, it is hard to imagine what a State could ever do to avoid an intentionaldiscrimination charge.

Rather than answer that question, the plaintiffs insist that the 2013 Legislature adopted Plan C235 in a

sinister effort to “insulate” its map from judicial review.

If all plaintiffs mean is that the Legislature adopted the

Court’s remedial plan with the modest hope of ending

the litigation and maximizing its chances of complying

with the VRA and Constitution, then they are correct.

But there is nothing sinister about that. To the extent

plaintiffs mean that the Legislature asserted immunity

from judicial review, that is just not true. Of course

courts may review the districts for discriminatory effects, and of course courts may review the actions of the

2013 Legislature for discriminatory purpose. But what

courts may not do is ignore the distinct intent behind

the 2013 enactment and charge the 2013 Legislature

with discriminatory intent for failure to “cure” the purported discriminatory intent of the 2011 Legislature, as

discriminatory intent does not carry over from one law

to another.

Hunter v. Underwood, 471 U.S. 222 (1985), does not

suggest otherwise. Hunter did not involve a legislature’s adoption of a court-ordered remedy, let alone

such an act taken after that court issued an opinion explaining how the court-ordered remedy complied with

all applicable federal law. Indeed, Hunter did not involve the adoption of new legislation at all. Hunter

merely considered whether the passage of time removed the original discriminatory intent behind a state

constitutional provision that had been in effect for 80

years and concededly “was motivated by a desire to discriminate against blacks on account of race.” Id. at 233.

It is thus absurd for plaintiffs to claim this case is

“indistinguishable” from Hunter. Mot. 22. Rather than

rely on the passage of time to alleviate the alleged discriminatory intent behind the 2011 plan, the 2013 Legislature passed new legislation: It repealed the 2011 plan

before it took effect and adopted the district court’s remedial plan in its place. Far from supporting the plaintiffs’ claim that the 2011 Legislature’s intent could

nonetheless doom Plan C235, Hunter expressly reserved the question of whether the same law “would be

valid if enacted today without any impermissible motivation.” 471 U.S. at 233. And here, the Legislature did

not even reenact the same law, but enacted a different

law that fixed all the problems a federal court had identified with the previous legislation. Hunter has nothing

to say about that scenario.

At bottom, the plaintiffs’ defense of the district

court’s order has no basis in law or fact. When the 2013

Legislature adopted the court’s remedial plan, it had

every reason to believe that the plan complied with the

Constitution and the VRA. After all, the district court

itself had concluded that the plan likely did, and that

was the best legal advice the Legislature could hope for.

The plaintiffs’ baseless attempt to impugn the Legislature’s motives is irreconcilable with “the presumption of

good faith that must be accorded legislative enactments,” and the courts’ duty to “exercise extraordinary

caution in adjudicating claims that a State has drawn

district lines on the basis of race.” Miller v. Johnson,

515 U.S. 900, 916 (1995). The plaintiffs’ claims fail even

without that presumption, but they certainly cannot

succeed in the face of it.

III. Districts 27 and 35 Were Not Infected With Any

Discriminatory “Taint.”

Even assuming the 2011 Legislature’s intent were

relevant to the plaintiffs’ challenges to the 2013 map,

the plaintiffs’ arguments fail on their own terms because the 2011 versions of Districts 27 and 35 were not

infected with any discriminatory “taint.”

A. There Was No Vote Dilution in CD27.

This Court has long held that a discriminatorypurpose finding requires evidence that the legislature

“selected or reaffirmed a particular course of action at

least in part ‘because of,’ not merely ‘in spite of,’ its adverse effects upon an identifiable group.” Pers. Adm’r

of Mass. v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256, 279 (1979). It is therefore legal error to base a finding of discriminatory intent on the legislature’s mere “awareness of consequences.” Id.

That is exactly what the district court did in finding

that the Legislature’s awareness that some Hispanic

voters would reside in a Republican-leaning congressional district sufficed to establish intentional racial discrimination. Indeed, the only factual finding the plaintiffs cite—that “more than 200,000 Latinos in Nueces

County ‘who had been in an opportunity district were

no longer in such a district,’” Mot. 24 (quoting

Supp.App. 299a-300a)—is quintessential evidence of

mere awareness. If that alone sufficed to establish discriminatory intent, then a State would effectively be required to retain all previously existing minorityopportunity districts—a requirement found nowhere in

the Constitution or VRA §2.

In any event, CD27 resulted from race-neutral considerations. As Judge Smith explained in dissent,

“Blake Farenthold, an Anglo Republican, was a[] surprise winner in the 2010 Republican sweep,” and so

“[t]he Republican legislature set out to protect him.”

J.S. App. 356a (Smith, J., dissenting). The permissible

desire to protect an incumbent—not race—therefore

“drove the decisions made . . . in Nueces County and

throughout CD27.” J.S. App. 351a. The plaintiffs cannot

transform that decision into a race-based decision by

substituting “Anglo-preferred” for “incumbent.” Mot. 2.

Nor does the evidence support a finding of discriminatory effect. The plaintiffs ignore black-letter law that

establishing a vote-dilution claim “requires the possibility of creating more than the existing number of” minority-opportunity districts—the first Gingles requirement. LULAC v. Perry, 548 U.S. 399, 430 (2006) (quot-

ing Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U.S. 997, 1008 (1994)). If

no such possibility exists, there is no VRA §2 right to

remedy; the State may exercise its judgment to draw

district lines. Id. at 429-30. That is precisely what the

Legislature did here: it drew the maximum number

(seven) of minority-opportunity districts, recognizing

that some minorities (here, Nueces County Hispanics)

would not be in a minority-opportunity district. That is

perfectly legitimate under VRA §2 and this Court’s

precedents. Since Nueces County Hispanics are not sufficiently numerous to form a majority, they too suffer

from “the absence of [a] critical Gingles factor.” Mot. 2.

The plaintiffs contend that they nonetheless suffer

vote-dilution because the State “engineered a trade that

took § 2 rights from those having them [in Nueces

County] and gave those § 2 rights to those who did not

have them [in CD35].” Mot. 32. This strained analogy to

LULAC v. Perry is unfounded. In LULAC, the State

attempted to compensate for the elimination of a compact minority-opportunity district with a district that

lacked a reasonably compact minority population, LULAC, 548 U.S. at 433-35. Here, there is no dispute that

CD35 provides a compact minority group the opportunity to elect candidates of its choice.

Even if some part of CD35 does not demonstrate racial bloc voting, it does not follow that the Legislature

was forbidden to draw the district, much less that it was

obligated to keep Nueces County in CD27. “The ultimate object of the inquiry . . . is . . . the district as a

whole.” Bethune-Hill v. Va. State Bd. of Elections, 137

S. Ct. 788, 800 (2017).

B. CD35 Was Not Racially Gerrymandered.

The plaintiffs’ argument that the 2013 Legislature

racially gerrymandered CD35, Mot. 27, suffers from

several serious flaws. First, the plaintiffs’ contention

that motive is irrelevant to a racial gerrymandering

claim is plainly wrong. To be sure, racial gerrymandering need not be the product of invidious discrimination.

But it must still be the product of intentional sorting of

voters on the basis of race. See, e.g., Miller, 515 U.S. at

913. The plaintiffs cannot make that showing because

“the 2013 Legislature did not draw the challenged districts in Plan C235.” J.S. App. 34a.

Even if the 2011 Legislature’s intent mattered,

moreover, several significant problems would remain

with the plaintiffs’ argument that the Legislature

lacked a strong basis in evidence for drawing CD35 as it

did because it failed to establish that Gingles’ prerequisites were met in the Austin area. Mot. 30. First, that

argument implies that a State has no discretion in determining how to comply with the VRA. But this Court

rejected that theory in Bartlett v. Strickland when it

held that “§ 2 allows States to choose their own method

of complying with the Voting Rights Act.” 556 U.S. 1, 23

(2009). The plaintiffs admit that VRA §2 required seven

minority-opportunity districts in South/Central/West

Texas, and they do not dispute that CD35 covers that

area. Mot. 30. Nevertheless, they argue that the State

could not adopt “this particular version” of CD35 unless

it proved that §2 required it. Mot. 30. That principle has

no basis in law and would choke off what little breathing

room States have in balancing the competing demands

of the Constitution and the VRA.

Second, the plaintiffs’ assertion that the State may

not draw a minority-opportunity district unless it

proves that §2 requires the precise lines selected would

turn Gingles on its head. Gingles is a guard against vote

dilution, see Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 47

(1986), not a rigid limit on the State’s ability to draw

minority-opportunity districts. The plaintiffs do not argue that CD35 deprives minority voters in Travis County of “an equal opportunity to participate in the political

processes and to elect candidates of their choice.” Id. at

44 (quotation marks omitted). Nor could they, as CD35

undisputedly is a minority-opportunity district.

Third, the plaintiffs’ argument erroneously focuses

on only a small portion of CD35, not the entire district,

as this Court’s precedent requires. See Bethune-Hill,

137 S. Ct. at 800.

C O N C L U S IO N

The Court should deny the plaintiffs’ motion and

note probable jurisdiction, or summarily reverse the

district court’s order invalidating Plan C235.

Respectfully submitted.