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Lead Section
[edit]Evenwel versus Abbot was a Supreme Court case regarding how voting districts are organized in Texas. The case had to do with the “one person, one vote” principle of the Fourteenth Amendment. The plaintiffs in the case were Sue Evenwel and Edward Pfenniger. The defendant was Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas. The case originated in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin Division.
There is a part of the Texas Constitution which requires the state legislature to reapportion its senate districts after every federal caucus. Therefore, after the 2010 census Texas created a redistricting plan. A three-judge panel of the federal district court believed there was a substantial claim to the new plan violating the Voting Rights Act. An interim plan was created for the 2012 primary election and was subsequently signed into law. The interim plan required the state to count all people for the voting districts.
Case Upbringing
[edit]The case originated in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin Division. After the 2012 census the Texas government created a new redistricting plan, which was promptly shut down by the three-judge panel on the grounds that there was strong enough claim to say the plan violated the Voting Rights Act. The Texas government implemented the interim plan, which the plaintiffs, Pfenniger and Evenwel, claimed violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment: “one person, one vote.” The district court in Austin ruled in favor of the defendant, governor of Texas, citing the plaintiffs were unable to state a claim the interim plan violated the Equal Protection Clause. The plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court to hear their case. The case was granted on May 26th, 2015 and argued on December 8th of that year.
Connection to the Voting Rights Act
[edit]The Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965, with the goal of ending state's efforts of disenfranchisement. Congress determined the existing anti-discrimination laws were not enough to prevent state officials from offering resistance to the Fifteenth Amendment. As soon as one discriminatory act was deemed unconstitutional, states would create another thing to oppose the Fifteenth Amendment. Some of these discriminatory acts included poll taxes and literacy tests for minorities. The Voting Rights Act applied a nationwide prohibition against the denial or abridgement of the right to vote based on literacy tests. The act also created special enforcement provisions for areas where Congress believer there was the greatest potential for discrimination. Areas covered by this provision could not make any changes to their voting processes without the Attorney General or the US District Court deeming the change non-discriminatory.
Connection to Gerrymandering
[edit]Gerrymandering is the drawing of political boundaries, or voting districts, to give a political party a numeric advantage over the other for future elections. States often change their voting districts following the census, which is every ten years, including Texas. The party who controls the government manipulates the voting districts in a way to ensure there are more districts where the majority of that population vote for that given party. The power of redrawing voting districts is abused when the party who has more power in the government actually represents the minority amongst the population. When this happens the party who controls creating the districts can create abnormal districts giving the party who represents the minority of the population more representation in the government. The Evenwel v. Abbot case was not one about gerrymandering, because the changing of the districts does not revolve around giving one party a political advantage over the other. This case involved who should be counted when making voting districts.
Similar Cases in the Supreme Court
[edit]Evenwel v. Abbott was the first case to resolve the issue over who should be counted when drawing the voting district. Whether it should be based on same number of people or same number of voters. Therefore, the decision in this case, to allow the states to use total population for making voting districts, set the precedent for future cases similar to how this case was. However, there once was a case to solve another issue regarding voting districts. The 1964 Reynolds v Sims Supreme Court case ruled voting districts must contain close to the same number of people. The ruling did not specify which people count.