Experience

Brought a challenge on behalf of several Virginia voters, whose voting rights were diluted under the existing congressional reapportionment plan, in which the Virginia legislature used the preclearance requirements of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act as a pretext to pack African-American voters into Virginia’s gerrymandered 3rd Congressional District. A three-judge panel found that the Commonwealth’s current congressional reapportionment plan violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and ordered the Virginia legislature to enact a remedial plan. The court agreed that the 3rd Congressional District was a racial gerrymander and found that, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder, Section 5 can no longer justify race-based reapportionment. The opinion was the result of a multiday trial held in Richmond.