SEATTLE, Wash. (February 13, 2018) - Perkins Coie is pleased to announce that the firm’s Appellate practice was named 2017 Appellate Group of the Year by Law360. Only five nationally ranked law firms received this distinction.

The recognition highlights the group’s undefeated record at the U.S. Supreme Court last term after successful wins in two significant voting rights cases in Cooper v. Harris and Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Board of Elections, and the sovereign immunity case in Brian Lewis et al. v. William Clarke.

Marc Elias, chair of Perkins Coie’s Political Law practice, represented voters in the voting rights cases before the high court, is profiled in the Law360 feature, “Elias’ wins were distinctive in that they not only yielded improved representation for African-American voters, but they also represented a rare moment in which the high court sought to weigh in on the issue of redistricting.”

Eric Miller, Chair of Perkins Coie’s Appellate practice, also delivered a significant win for the firm in Brian Lewis et al. v. William Clarke, obtaining a unanimous decision that the sovereign immunity of an Indian tribe does not bar damages actions against tribal employees. Eric is quoted in the profile saying, “The particular question in this case is of increasing significance as tribal commercial activity, especially gaming, increases. There are more and more cases in which tribal employees, like employees of any other large commercial enterprises, are involved in torts.”

Among the winning cases that Law360 said led to the Group of the Year honors were:

• Cooper v. Harris: This significant U.S. Supreme Court victory ruled that North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature unlawfully relied on race when drawing two of the state’s congressional districts. In 2013, Perkins Coie filed this lawsuit on behalf of two North Carolina residents seeking invalidation of North Carolina’s 1st and 12th Congressional Districts as racial gerrymanders in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Following the October 2015 trial, a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina found in our clients’ favor in February 2016. The court struck down the 2011 congressional plan, enjoined further elections under it, and directed the North Carolina General Assembly to adopt a new map. The panel then denied the defendants’ motion to stay, as did the U.S. Supreme Court. Argued back-to-back, on the same morning, as Bethune-Hill, detailed below, on December 5, 2016, the Court’s 5-3 ruling in our favor upheld the federal district court decision that struck down North Carolina’s 1st and 12th districts. Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the 1st district “produced boundaries amplifying divisions between blacks and whites,” while in the 12th, “race, not politics, accounted for the district’s reconfiguration.”
• Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Board of Elections: The U.S. Supreme Court found the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia had applied the wrong legal standard to our racial gerrymandering claims, and it remanded the case for additional proceedings to determine whether 11 of Virginia’s 12 majority-minority districts in the Commonwealth’s House of Delegates were drawn unconstitutionally. On behalf of affected Virginia voters, Perkins Coie challenged the redistricting of the Virginia House of Delegates’ 12 majority-minority districts, contending that the legislature drew them based on a mechanical racial rule untethered to the requirements of the Voting Rights Act, in violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Specifically, the legislature applied a one-size-fits-all uncompromising racial threshold of at least 55% Black Voting Age Population for each district, regardless of its individual circumstances. Perkins Coie successfully argued that the result was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander that packed minority voters into these districts, thereby limiting their influence in surrounding districts.
• Brian Lewis et al. v. William Clarke: In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Perkins Coie clients, Brian and Michelle Lewis, a couple injured in a car crash resulting from the negligence of the driver of a limousine owned by the Mohegan Tribe of Indians of Connecticut. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed a Connecticut Supreme Court decision that William Clarke, an employee of the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority, was immune from a state court lawsuit based on injuries sustained by the Lewises. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Clarke’s argument that the Tribe’s sovereign immunity should protect him from suit. It held that the sovereign immunity of an Indian tribe does not bar damages actions against tribal employees as individuals.

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