On Monday, the Supreme Court handed Republicans a significant win when justices refused to hear a challenge to Kansas’s GOP-drawn congressional map.
In an unsigned order, justices rejected an appeal from a group of Kansas voters, who argued that a lower court used the wrong legal standard in upholding the map.
Previously, a state court ruled against the GOP-drawn map, ruling the legislature intentionally discriminated against minority voters in designing the congressional district boundaries.
According to reports from The Hill, new changes to the map split Wyandotte County, which contains Kansas City. Challengers asserted the move eliminated the ability of minority voters to continue electing their preferred candidate. The state argued the changes were necessary to respond to population growth in the area and did not involve intentional discrimination.
The Kansas Supreme Court then reversed in favor of the state in a 4-3 vote. The state Supreme Court found that the challengers failed to show that the minority voters in question were sufficiently numerous to form their own majority-minority district.
The 4-3 decision ruled the showing was a precondition for the challengers to bring their claim, a reference to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Thornburg v. Gingles case.
But the challengers argued that Gingles should only apply to Voting Rights Act lawsuits that claim a map resulted in discrimination. The voters say their lawsuit challenges the map as intentional discrimination, a claim brought directly under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
“Under this conception of the Fourteenth Amendment, where minority voters are fewer in number or more dispersed, states have carte blanche to intentionally discriminate against them in drawing districts — even if the legislature announced that it acted specifically to disadvantage minority voters,” the challengers wrote in their brief to the justices.
“This intolerable rule would apply across most of the country, given the relatively small number of areas with sufficiently numerous and concentrated minority populations.”
Kansas argued the map was lawful and did not involve intentional discrimination and the GOP-led state contended the Supreme Court lacked jurisdiction to hear the challenge.
“Petitioners’ argument is premised on the theory that this case involves intentional minority vote dilution,” the state wrote. “But it is not plausible that the Kansas Legislature enacted SB 355 with a racially discriminatory purpose. Petitioners’ claims would therefore fail regardless of the answer to the question presented.”
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