Supreme Court hands Latino voters a victory in racial gerrymandering case

The Supreme Court handed Latino voters in Washington State a victory on Tuesday — and declined a move that could have potentially eroded Voting Rights Act protections further.

According to Democracy Docket, the justices will not take up Soto Palmer v. Hobbs, a case filed in 2022 in which a judge found legislative districts in Eastern Washington intentionally "cracked" Latino voters to deny them representation. The justices simultaneously reversed the dismissal of a parallel racial gerrymandering lawsuit filed by Republicans, sending it back to a lower court for consideration.

Washington State's legislature is solidly Democratic and a redraw of these districts would be unlikely to create significant gains for the GOP. However, it could make it easier for Latino voters to elect a candidate of their choice.

This comes after a year of litigation in which the Supreme Court, which spent over a decade chipping away at various enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act, surprised many legal observers by upholding some protections against racial gerrymandering.

Both Louisiana and Alabama have been forced to draw an additional majority-Black congressional district after various courts determined they diluted Black voting power, in particular the landmark Allen v. Milligan ruling. Alabama in particular attempted to defy the court rulings, passing a new map that made almost no changes from the original gerrymander, but was promptly denied, at which point a special master was appointed to draw the map for them.

All of this is occurring as voting rights groups have used their newly-elected liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court to smack down legislative gerrymanders there, clearing the way for the most nonpartisan maps in over a decade.

Also Tuesday, the Supreme Court declined to entertain a challenge to new admissions criteria at a Virginia public high school that eliminated standardized tests, allowing the school to move forward with a policy they hope will diversify the school's student body.

"As is its custom, the court gave no reasons for turning down the case," the New York Times' Adam Liptak reported. "Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. issued a dissent, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, that was harshly critical of an appeals court’s ruling in the case upholding the new criteria and rejecting the challengers’ argument that they unlawfully disadvantaged Asian Americans."

The Court’s “willingness to swallow the aberrant decision below is hard to understand,” Justice Alito remarked. “We should wipe the decision off the books, and because the court refuses to do so, I must respectfully dissent.”