Voting Rights

Gerrymandering critics used the ruling to call for reforms in how state political maps are drawn, including broader use of independent commissions instead of having state legislatures draw the districts. "It is time for voters to take up the fight to pass redistricting reform at the state and local level because a narrow Supreme Court majority under Chief Justice John Roberts has failed to protect the voting rights of minority communities,” Common Cause president Karen Hobert Flynn said in a statement.

Except for one state legislative district, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Texas congressional and state legislative districts and overturned a lower court decision that the districts were racially discriminatory. The lower court in Abbott v. Perez had previously determined that the districts violated 14th Amendment equal protection and the Voting Rights Act. Common Cause filed an amicus brief on behalf of the plaintiff-appellees in this case.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach's voter database has generated thousands of "false positive" duplicate registrations. Some states want to use to system to remove voters from their registration rolls.

If the Supreme Court does someday set limits on partisan gerrymandering, the details of the new standard will affect how quickly challengers can move to strike down a map. Kathay Feng, national redistricting director at Common Cause, said the court could require challengers to wait a few elections to show that one party had obtained a durable advantage. Alternatively, the court could require challengers to show only that the party in power intentionally drew a map to put the other party at a disadvantage. A more aggressive standard like that, Feng said, would allow lawsuits to move forward sooner.

Pratt said in her ruling that Common Cause "has a high likelihood of success" on its claim that the law violates some of the requirements of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and "threatens disenfranchisement of eligible voters."