Amicus Curiae Brief — Greg Abbott, et al., Applicants v. League of United Latin American Citizens, et al.

No. 25A608

In the

Supreme Court of the United States

GOV. GREG ABBOTT, in his official capacity as Governor of the State of Texas, et al.,

Applicants,

v.

LEAGUE OF UNITED LATIN AMERICAN CITIZENS, et al.,

Respondents.

BRIEF OF AMICUS CURIAE STATE OF MISSOURI AND TWENTY-ONE

OTHER STATES SUPPORTING THE APPLICATION FOR STAY

CATHERINE L. HANAWAY

MISSOURI ATTORNEY GENERAL

207 W. High St.

Jefferson City, MO 65101

Tel: (573) 645-9662

Fax: (573) 751-0774

Louis J. Capozzi, III

Solicitor General

Counsel of Record

Kathleen Hunker

Principal Deputy Solicitor General

J. Michael Patton

Deputy Solicitor General

Louis.Capozzi@ago.mo.gov

November 24, 2025

Counsel for State of Missouri

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ...................................................................................... iii

INTRODUCTION AND INTERESTS OF AMICI ................................................... 1

ARGUMENT ................................................................................................................. 3

The district court ignored Alexander’s alternative-map rule. ............................ 3

The district court’s reasons for ignoring the alternative-map rule are

erroneous. ................................................................................................................... 8

ADDITIONAL SIGNATORIES ................................................................................ 17

ii

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Cases

Alexander v. S.C. State Conf. of the NAACP,

602 U.S. 1 (2024).....................................1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

Brnovich v. Democratic Nat’l Comm.,

594 U.S. 647 (2021).................................................................................................. 13

Chapman v. Meier,

420 U.S. 1 (1975)........................................................................................................ 7

Cooper v. Harris,

581 U.S. 285, 308 (2017) ........................................................................................ 4, 6

Easley v. Cromartie (“Cromartie II”),

532 U.S. 234 (2001)...................................................................................... 4, 5, 9, 10

Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal,

546 U.S. 418 (2006).................................................................................................... 8

Hirabayashi v. United States,

320 U.S. 81 (1943)...................................................................................................... 3

League of Women Voters of Fla. Inc. v. Fla. Sec’y of State,

66 F.4th 905 (CA11 2023)........................................................................................ 13

Miller v. Johnson,

515 U.S. 900 (1995).................................................................................... 1, 7, 14, 15

Plessy v. Ferguson,

163 U.S. 537 (1896).................................................................................................... 3

Rucho v. Common Cause,

588 U.S. 684 (2019).............................................................................................. 7, 15

S.C. State Conf. of NAACP v. Alexander,

649 F. Supp. 3d 177 (D.S.C. 2023) ............................................................................ 6

Shaw v. Reno (“Shaw I”),

509 U.S. 630 (1993).................................................................................................... 3

United States v. O’Brien,

391 U.S. 367 (1968).................................................................................................. 13

iii

Vieth v. Jubelirer,

541 U.S. 267 (2004).................................................................................................... 8

Other Authorities

Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom), X (Aug. 20, 2025) .................................................. 2

Governor Gavin Newsom (@CAgovernor), X (Nov. 18, 2025)....................................... 2

Gregory S. Schneider & Erin Cox, Here’s the redistricting plan Virginia Democrats

want voters to approve, Washington Post (Oct. 29, 2025) ........................................ 2

Shane Goldmacher & Laura Rosenhall, California Approves New House Maps in a

Major Win for Democrats and Newsom, N.Y. Times (Nov. 4, 2025) ........................ 2

iv

To the Honorable Samuel A. Alito,

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and

Circuit Justice for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

INTRODUCTION AND INTERESTS OF AMICI

“Redistricting constitutes a traditional domain of state legislative authority.”

Alexander v. S.C. State Conf. of the NAACP, 602 U.S. 1, 7 (2024).

And “[f]ederal-

court review of districting legislation represents a serious intrusion on the most vital

of local functions.”

Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900, 915 (1995).

Amicus the State

of Missouri and twenty-one other States strongly object to a U.S. district court’s

severe intrusion on Texas’s sovereign and “most vital” right to redistrict.

1a–160a.

Id.; App.

The district court issued a preliminary injunction in favor of Plaintiffs,

transparently attempting to weaponize the federal judiciary to repeal the will of

Texas’s elected representatives.

See App. 160a.

The court’s decision transfers five

congressional seats to Plaintiffs’ preferred political party.

Id. at 93a, 160a; see also

id. at 194a (Smith, J., dissenting).

That kind of order—with that kind of remedy—should set off loud alarm bells.

This Court’s precedents required the district court to “be wary of plaintiffs who seek

to transform federal courts into ‘weapons of political warfare’ that will deliver them

victories that eluded them ‘in the political arena.’”

(citation omitted).

Alexander, 602 U.S. at 11

The district court paid no heed to this directive.

Rather, in a 2-

1 split decision, the court obliged Plaintiffs’ dramatic request, reasoning that the

Texas Legislature racially gerrymandered its congressional map.

The district court

issued this holding even though it is obvious to the whole country that Texas’s map

was motivated by partisan considerations—just like redistricting efforts in other

1

States.

See, e.g., Shane Goldmacher & Laura Rosenhall, California Approves New

House Maps in a Major Win for Democrats and Newsom, N.Y. Times (Nov. 4, 2025);

Gregory S. Schneider & Erin Cox, Here’s the redistricting plan Virginia Democrats

want voters to approve, Washington Post (Oct. 29, 2025); Gavin Newsom

(@GavinNewsom), X (Aug. 20, 2025) (“It’s on, Texas.”);1 Governor Gavin Newsom

(@CAgovernor), X (Nov. 18, 2025) (“Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire,

got burned—and democracy won.”).2

Worst of all, the district court performed its intrusion while artificially

distinguishing this Court’s precedent in Alexander v. South Carolina State

Conference of the N.A.A.C.P, 602 U.S. 1 (2024).

Alexander requires plaintiffs

advancing racial gerrymandering claims to present, except in the most unusual

circumstances not present in this case, an alternative map that could satisfy the

legislature’s political goals in a race-neutral manner.

Id. at 10, 34–35. Plaintiffs

here made no efforts to comply with this requirement.

Instead, they incredulously

claimed that drafting an alternative map was impossible at the preliminaryinjunction stage.

But Plaintiffs know better.

Their own expert boasted that “she

could run ‘a million maps in a matter of seconds’ on a digital watch and have her

robot execute a hundred thousand simulations in about an hour.”

App. at 237a

(Smith, J., dissenting) (quoting Tr. 10/6/2025 AM 75:25–77:5) (emphasis in original).

Even so, the district court disregarded the alternative-map rule, and it unilaterally

1 https://x.com/GavinNewsom/status/1958314191032607038 (accessed Nov. 24, 2025).

2 https://x.com/CAgovernor/status/1990872695731318937 (accessed Nov. 24, 2025).

2

re-imposed Texas’s old map—awarding Plaintiffs’ preferred party five congressional

seats in the process.

This is blatant error.

To ensure that racial gerrymandering

claims are not used for nakedly political ends, the Court should stay the district

court’s preliminary injunction pending appeal.

ARGUMENT

The district court ignored Alexander’s alternative-map rule.

This Court has frankly acknowledged that “redistricting is an inescapably

political enterprise.”

Alexander, 602 U.S. at 6.

“Legislators are almost always

aware of the political ramifications of the maps they adopt, and claims that a map is

unconstitutional because it was drawn to achieve a partisan end are not justiciable

in federal court.”

Id.

“Thus, as far as the Federal Constitution is concerned, a

legislature may pursue partisan ends when it engages in redistricting.”

Id.

That said, racial gerrymandering is—of course—patently unconstitutional.

And Missouri and the undersigned States strongly agree that States cannot

intentionally sort voters on the basis of race.

See Brief of the State of Missouri as

Amicus Curiae, Louisiana v. Callais, Nos. 24-109, 24-110 (U.S., Sept. 24, 2025).

“Our constitution is color-blind.”

(Harlan, J., dissenting).

Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 559 (1896)

And “[c]lassifications of citizens solely on the basis of race

‘are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon

the doctrine of equality.’”

Shaw v. Reno (“Shaw I”), 509 U.S. 630, 643 (1993) (quoting

Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, 100 (1943)).

3

This Court has also recognized a problem, however, when politically motivated

litigants use racial-gerrymandering claims to seek partisan advantage.

602 U.S. at 11.

correlated.

Alexander,

The problem is that race and political party are, at least sometimes,

In these scenarios, race and political party are “‘capable of yielding

similar oddities in a district’s boundaries.’”

U.S. 285, 308 (2017)).

Id. at 9 (quoting Cooper v. Harris, 581

When that happens, partisans often advance racial

gerrymandering claims to frame constitutional legislation as if it were enacted in bad

faith.

Id. at 11. Therefore, in Alexander, this Court reiterated a common-sense

solution to that problem:

The alternative-map requirement.

See id. at 10, 34–35

(citing Easley v. Cromartie (“Cromartie II”), 532 U.S. 234 (2001)).

Under the

alternative-map requirement, plaintiffs advancing a racial gerrymandering challenge

(unless they have strong direct evidence of discriminatory intent) must present “an

alternative [congressional] map showing that a rational legislature sincerely driven”

by partisan—rather than racial—“goals would have drawn a different map with

greater racial balance.”

Alexander, 602 U.S. at 10.

snuffing

gerrymandering

out

partisan

This is an essential tool for

challenges

masquerading

as

racial

gerrymandering challenges.

To understand the alternative-map requirement, one must keep the Alexander

case itself in mind. Alexander involved a challenge to South Carolina’s redistricting

efforts in the wake of the 2020 Census. Id. at 7.

Based on nothing other than

circumstantial evidence, a three-judge district court unanimously held that the South

Carolina Legislature had racially gerrymandered its congressional map.

4

Id.

But

on appeal, this Court reversed, holding that the district court’s factual findings were

clear error.

Id.

In doing so, this Court emphasized two foundational principles:

First, “a

party challenging a map’s constitutionality” bears the burden of “disentangl[ing] race

and politics if it wishes to prove that the legislature was motivated by race as opposed

to partisanship.”

Id. at 6.

To succeed, a plaintiff must prove that race, not politics,

“‘drove a district’s lines.’”

Id. at 9 (citation omitted) (emphasis in original). Second,

this Court emphasized that “in assessing a legislature’s work,” courts must “start

with a presumption that the legislature acted in good faith”—drawing maps based on

a permissible objective rather than race.

Id. at 6.

So if “either politics or race could

explain a district’s contours, the plaintiff has not cleared its bar” and courts must

assume that politics drove the legislature’s decision.

Id. at 11.

Taking these two principles together, Alexander reaffirmed a longstanding

rule:

To succeed on a racial gerrymandering claim, a plaintiff must—absent

extraordinary circumstances—present an alternative map showing that the state

legislature could have accomplished all its partisan goals with significantly greater

racial balance between congressional districts.

II, 532 U.S. 234).

See id. at 10, 34–35 (citing Cromartie

“Without an alternative map, it is difficult for plaintiffs to defeat

[the] starting presumption that the legislature acted in good faith”—a presumption

that “directs district courts to draw the inference that cuts in the legislature’s favor

when confronted with evidence that could plausibly support multiple conclusions.”

Id. at 10.

Later in the Alexander opinion, this Court emphasized again:

5

“[W]hen

all plaintiffs can muster is meager direct evidence of a racial gerrymander only an

alternative map of that kind can carry the day.”

Id. at 34–35 (cleaned up) (emphasis

added).

This Court also emphasized that an alternative map is not “difficult to

produce.”

Id. at 35. “Any expert armed with a computer ‘can easily churn out

redistricting maps that control for any number of specified criteria, including prior

voting patterns and political party registration.’”

Id. (citation omitted).

Thus, a

“plaintiff’s failure to submit an alternative map—precisely because it can be designed

with ease—should be interpreted by district courts as an implicit concession that the

plaintiff cannot draw a map that undermines the legislature’s defense that the

districting lines were ‘based on a permissible, rather than a prohibited, ground.’”

(quoting Cooper, 581 U.S. at 317).

Id.

The three-judge district court in Alexander erred

because it failed to “follow this basic logic.”

Id. at 36.

And even though the three-

judge panel issued a unanimous decision after an eight-day bench trial with hundreds

of exhibits, this Court reversed for clear error, citing the Alexander plaintiffs’ failure

to produce an alternative map.

Id.; see S.C. State Conf. of NAACP v. Alexander, 649

F. Supp. 3d 177, 183 (D.S.C. 2023).

The district court here committed the same error.

Despite Alexander’s strong

and straightforward holding, the district court didn’t get the message.

Although it

acknowledged that “the Plaintiff Groups ha[d] not submitted an Alexander map,” it

excused that failure and transferred five congressional seats to Plaintiffs’ preferred

political party.

See App. 93a, 132a.

6

That is an egregious error that calls out for correction.

Although following

this Court’s precedent is never optional, it is especially important in this “inescapably

political”

context

rife

Alexander, 602 U.S. at 6.

with

federalism

and

separation-of-powers

concerns.

“It is well settled that ‘reapportionment is primarily the

duty and responsibility of the State.’”

Meier, 420 U.S. 1, 27 (1975)).

Miller, 515 U.S. at 915 (quoting Chapman v.

And this Court has warned repeatedly—in crystal

clear terms—that courts must remain wary of partisans who seek to undermine the

State legislative process by weaponizing federal courts.

Alexander, 602 U.S. at 11.

Adhering to the alternative-map requirement is essential if courts are to avoid being

manipulated

by

partisan

litigants

seeking

political

gain

through

racial

gerrymandering claims.

That’s exactly what happened here.

Plaintiffs asked the district court to

transfer five seats to their preferred political party, and the district court obliged,

even though Plaintiffs had no alternative map and no direct evidence of a racial

gerrymander.

This

is

patently

unfair

to

Texas—a

State

whose

elected

representatives have the sovereign right to apportion congressional seats.

Alexander, 602 U.S. at 7; Miller, 515 U.S. at 915.

Additionally, taking away some

States’ power to redistrict for political gain, while leaving States like Illinois free to

gerrymander at will, is fundamentally unfair.

And such decisions threaten to

enmesh the courts in the middle of “intensely partisan” fights. Rucho v. Common

Cause, 588 U.S. 684, 718–19 (2019). Thus, faithfully and carefully enforcing

Alexander’s alternative-map rule is not just compelled by precedent; it is essential to

7

preserving the integrity of the federal courts.

Cf. Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U.S. 267,

307 (2004) (Kennedy, J., concurring) (“With uncertain limits, intervening courts—

even when proceeding with best intentions—would risk assuming political, not legal,

responsibility for a process that often produces ill will and distrust.”).

The district court’s reasons for ignoring the alternative-map rule are

erroneous.

The district court tried a few excuses for its decision to brush aside the

alternative-map rule, but all fail.

App. 130a–34a. If this Court allows the district

court’s reasoning to stand, lower courts will easily flout the alternative-map

requirement,

thus

reopening

the

floodgates

of

nakedly

political

racial

gerrymandering claims.

First, the district court claimed that it need not apply the alternative-map

requirement because the case below is at the preliminary injunction stage.

132a–34a.

App.

But that rule makes no sense because “the burdens at the preliminary

injunction stage track the burdens at trial,” and the party seeking a preliminary

injunction always “bears the burden of demonstrating a likelihood of success on the

merits.”

Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal, 546 U.S. 418,

428–29 (2006).

Alternative maps “can be designed with ease,” which is precisely

why “[a] plaintiff ’s failure to submit an alternative map” is dispositive.

602 U.S. at 35.

Alexander,

Any plaintiff whose case would benefit from an alternative map will

inevitably produce one.

Id.

So if plaintiffs do not provide an alternative map, they

almost certainly cannot prove a likelihood of success on the merits.

8

An Alexander

map is central to an effective claim, id., but the district court made it an afterthought

by holding that Plaintiffs can prove a likelihood of success without an Alexander map.

Consider what the district court’s sidelining of Alexander incentivizes.

If the

district court’s maneuver is permissible, enterprising partisan lawyers will file lastminute lawsuits, just close enough to an election so that they can feign inability to

make an Alexander showing.

That will force the federal judiciary into rushed

disputes, with limited evidence, and opposing political parties (or their proxies) on

either side of the “v.” That is precisely what happened here, with Plaintiffs seeking

(and obtaining) five congressional seats for their preferred party in the 2026 midterm

elections.

App. 93a, 160a; see also id. at 194a (Smith, J., dissenting).

These are

exactly the kind of partisan disputes—thinly disguised as legal fights—that

Alexander and Cromartie II are designed to avoid.

Strict adherence to Alexander is

thus more important during the preliminary-injunction phase, not less.

Second, the district court claimed the Plaintiffs did not have time to prepare

an alternative map, suggesting they could potentially offer one at trial.

App. 132a–

34a. That is just another way of saying Plaintiffs did not meet their evidentiary

burden.

Alexander, 602 U.S. at 35.

Regardless, that claim is obviously wrong.

Plaintiffs had over six weeks to prepare between the date they moved for a

preliminary-injunction hearing and the district court’s October 1 hearing.

Compare

Doc. 1127, LULAC v. Abbott, No. 3:21-cv-259 (W.D. Tex., Aug. 18, 2025), with App.

52a. Plaintiffs also requested an “expedited September hearing,” Doc. 1127 at 1,

even though the court ultimately settled on an October 1 hearing, citing its own

9

“unmovable commitments,” Doc. 1146 at 1, LULAC v. Abbott, No. 3:21-cv-259 (W.D.

Tex., Aug. 28, 2025). If anything, Plaintiffs had several more weeks than they said

they needed to marshal the requisite evidence.

Also, with modern map-simulating technology, Plaintiffs could have prepared

an Alexander map in minutes if it was possible to achieve Texas’s “legitimate political

objectives” while producing “significantly greater racial balance.”

U.S. at 34 (quoting Cromartie II, 532 U.S. at 528).

Alexander, 602

The district court itself

acknowledged that Plaintiffs’ expert created “tens of thousands” of alternative

“congressional maps” before the preliminary injunction hearing.

App. 127a.

And

Plaintiffs’ expert boasted that “she could run ‘a million maps in a matter of seconds’

on a digital watch and have her robot execute a hundred thousand simulations in

about an hour.”

App. 237a (Smith, J., dissenting) (quoting Tr. 10/6/2025 AM 75:25–

77:5) (emphasis in original).

That same expert also submitted an updated report in

September, once it became clear that Plaintiffs would have more time to ready their

evidence.

Doc. 1384-8, LULAC v. Abbott, No. 3:21-cv-259 (W.D. Tex., Oct. 6, 2025)

(Report dated Sept. 7, 2025).

Other Plaintiffs’ experts submitted reports even later.

See, e.g., Doc. 1390-2, No. 3:21-cv-259 (W.D. Tex., Oct. 6, 2025) (Report dated Sept.

29, 2025). None attempted to comply with Alexander.

The truth is that Plaintiffs did not create an alternative map because that

would not have achieved their objective.

for their preferred party.

Plaintiffs wanted five congressional seats

See Doc. 1149 at 27, LULAC v. Abbott, No. 3:21-cv-259

(W.D. Tex., Aug. 28, 2025) (“[T]he Court should preliminarily enjoin the use of HB 4’s

10

districts and order Texas to continue to use the prior congressional districts for the

2026 election.” (emphasis added)).

But if Plaintiffs had created an Alexander map,

the district court could not have unilaterally awarded Plaintiffs the result they

wanted.

Rather, Texas could have remedied the alleged racial gerrymander by

simply enacting the Alexander map that achieved greater racial balance while

pursuing Texas’s political ends.

App. 238a (Smith, J., dissenting) (“The fact that

[Plaintiffs] did not file an alternative map curing the alleged discriminatory infirmity

(the one they purport to care about) tells you all that the instant case is about—

partisan gain.

Duchin [Plaintiffs’ expert] makes no bones about this, either.”

(emphasis in original)).

Third, the district court claimed that it could overlook the absence of an

Alexander map because there was “direct evidence” of racial gerrymandering.

132a.

App.

But the district court’s understanding of sufficient “direct evidence” was far

too broad.

To avoid thinly veiled partisan suits, Alexander makes the presumption

of legislative good faith central.

Alexander, 602 U.S. at 6.

And that is why “meager

direct evidence of a racial gerrymander” can “only” “carry the day” alongside “an

alternative map.”

critical.

Id. at 34–35 (cleaned up) (emphasis added).

Policing this line is

Otherwise courts will wrongly characterize circumstantial evidence and

meager direct evidence as sufficient to ignore the alternative-map rule.

That’s exactly what happened here.

The district court’s most prominent

example of so-called “direct evidence” was a letter from the Department of Justice

supposedly asking Texas “to engage in racial gerrymandering.”

11

App. 59a–60a.

But

a letter from the DOJ is not direct evidence.

map.

The DOJ did not draw or enact Texas’s

A “dedicated Republican operative” drew the map, and the Texas Legislature

passed it.

App. 185a–204a (Smith, J., dissenting).

“Direct evidence” concerns the

“relevant state actor’s” motivations, often “com[ing] in the form” of “express

acknowledgment that race played a role in the drawing of district lines.”

602 U.S. at 8.

Alexander,

So no matter what the DOJ letter said, the letter alone cannot justify

ignoring Alexander.

At any rate, the district court failed to cite sufficient direct evidence that the

“relevant state actor[s]”—the map drawer and the Texas Legislature—intended to

racially gerrymander during the 2025 re-districting.

App. 65a–104a.

Alexander, 602 U.S. at 8; see

Here, the map drawer was “a paid, experienced, dedicated

Republican operative” named Adam Kincaid.

(citing Tr. 10/7/25 AM 33:25–34:2).

App. 185a–86a (Smith, J., dissenting)

Kincaid did most of his work before the DOJ

letter was even sent. App. 472a–73a. That fact devastates the district court’s entire

merits theory.

Kincaid’s testimony reinforces the Texas Legislature’s partisan intent.

Indeed, Kincaid frankly testified at the preliminary-injunction hearing: “I drew a

race-blind map using partisan results,” Tr. 10/8/25 AM 69:6–7, and “I drew my map

using politics from start to finish and provided that to the Legislature,” App. 520a.

He also expressly emphasized, “I don’t think it’s constitutional to draw maps based

off of race.”

App. 459a.

Kincaid testified for two days, meticulously explaining the

political rationale for each district on Texas’s congressional map.

12

See App. 185a–

204a (Smith, J., dissenting) (“[Kincaid’s] two-day testimony (without any notes) was

detailed, methodical, and meticulous.

When given the opportunity to do so, on both

direct and cross, he had a perfectly legitimate and candidly partisan explanation for

his every decision . . . I easily credit his testimony as wholly convincing and

unassailable.”).

Kincaid’s race-blind map was the map provided to the Texas Legislature.

App. 520a. To succeed on their claims, the Plaintiffs need to show that the Texas

Legislature passed that race-blind map predominantly because of racist intentions.

Alexander, 602 U.S. at 6–8.

To this end, the district court collected stray comments

from a few legislators showing—at most—that some were aware of the racial makeup

of the proposed districts.

App. 66a–79a. But that is not enough under Alexander.

Alexander establishes that “there is nothing nefarious about . . . awareness of the

State’s racial demographics.”

602 U.S. at 37.

And even if this Court believes that

a couple of legislators were mainly motivated by race, that is not direct evidence about

the intent of the entire Texas Legislature in passing Kincaid’s color-blind map. See

Brnovich v. Democratic Nat’l Comm., 594 U.S. 647, 689 (2021) (Legislators “exercise

their [own] judgment” and “the legislators who vote to adopt a bill are not the agents

of the bill’s sponsor or proponents.”); United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 384

(1968) (“What motivates one legislator to make a speech about a statute is not

necessarily what motivates scores of others to enact it . . .”); League of Women Voters

of Fla. Inc. v. Fla. Sec’y of State, 66 F.4th 905, 932 (CA11 2023) (W. Pryor, C.J.)

(same).

13

At bottom, all the district court has is that four of Texas’s congressional

districts became majority-Hispanic districts, and a few legislators touted this fact

while trying to show that their partisan motivations were not racist.

08a (Smith, J., dissenting).

See App. 207a–

But there is no direct evidence that any Texas legislator

voted for Kincaid’s race-blind map predominantly because they prefer majority

Hispanic districts to majority mixed-minority districts.

The evidence here is

quintessential circumstantial evidence—not direct evidence of racist intentions.

With only circumstantial evidence and—at best—“meager direct evidence,” the

district court grossly erred by ignoring Alexander’s alternative-map requirement.

Alexander, 602 U.S. at 34–35.

Once again, this Court has instructed that “only an

alternative map” can “carry the day” for claims like Plaintiffs’.

(citation omitted).

Id. (cleaned up)

Nothing justified the district court’s dramatic departure from

precedent here.

*

*

*

Redistricting is an enormously sensitive political issue that is the concern of

State governments.

Alexander, 602 U.S. at 7; Miller, 515 U.S. at 915. Federal

courts must remain neutral, and not to be used as puppets in partisan games.

Alexander, 602 U.S. at 11. Alexander’s alternative-map requirement is essential to

ensure racial gerrymandering claims are not used that way. The alternative-map

requirement is the basic way that plaintiffs prove that a state legislature

gerrymandered congressional districts for racial reasons, not political reasons.

Id.

at 10, 34–35. The alternative-map requirement also prevents litigants from using

14

federal courts as a weapon to override the valid policies of the people’s elected

representatives.

Id.

By openly defying Alexander’s alternative-map requirement, the district court

inserted itself into a political dispute and transferred five congressional seats to the

Plaintiffs’ preferred political party.

dissenting).

That nakedly partisan outcome is the exact opposite of what this

Court’s precedents require.

19.

App. 93a, 160a; see also id. at 194a (Smith, J.,

See Alexander, 602 U.S. at 6; Rucho, 588 U.S. at 718–

Only by enforcing its prior holding can this Court ensure that federal courts do

not become hopelessly enmeshed in “inescapably political” state redistricting fights.

Alexander, 602 U.S. at 6; Miller, 515 U.S. at 915.

CONCLUSION

This Court should grant the application for stay of the preliminary injunction.

15

November 24, 2025

Respectfully submitted,

CATHERINE L. HANAWAY

MISSOURI ATTORNEY GENERAL

/s/ Louis J. Capozzi, III

Louis J. Capozzi, III

Solicitor General

Counsel of Record

Kathleen Hunker

Principal Deputy Solicitor General

J. Michael Patton

Deputy Solicitor General

OFFICE OF THE MISSOURI

ATTORNEY GENERAL

Supreme Court Building

207 West High Street

P.O. Box 899

Jefferson City, MO 65102

(573) 645-9662

Louis.Capozzi@ago.mo.gov

Counsel for State of Missouri

16

ADDITIONAL SIGNATORIES

STEVE MARSHALL

Attorney General

State of Alabama

AUSTIN KNUDSEN

Attorney General

State of Montana

STEPHEN J. COX

Attorney General

State of Alaska

MICHAEL T. HILGERS

Attorney General

State of Nebraska

TIM GRIFFIN

Attorney General

State of Arkansas

DREW H. WRIGLEY

Attorney General

State of North Dakota

JAMES UTHMEIER

Attorney General

State of Florida

DAVE YOST

Attorney General

State of Ohio

RAÚL R. LABRADOR

Attorney General

State of Idaho

GENTNER DRUMMOND

Attorney General

State of Oklahoma

THEODORE E. ROKITA

Attorney General

State of Indiana

ALAN WILSON

Attorney General

State of South Carolina

BRENNA BIRD

Attorney General

State of Iowa

MARTY JACKLEY

Attorney General

State of South Dakota

KRIS KOBACH

Attorney General

State of Kansas

JONATHAN SKRMETTI

Attorney General

State of Tennessee

RUSSELL COLEMAN

Attorney General

State of Kentucky

DEREK BROWN

Attorney General

State of Utah

LIZ MURRILL

Attorney General

State of Louisiana

JOHN B. MCCUSKEY

Attorney General

State of West Virginia

LYNN FITCH

Attorney General

State of Mississippi

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