In 1991, Black and Latino communities in Galveston County, Texas, advocated for a majority-minority precinct in which they could elect a candidate of choice. This precinct—Precinct 3—was an important political homebase for Black and Latino residents for thirty years. Then, in 2021, the county dismantled that precinct, splitting the Black and Latino population across the Commissioners Court’s four precincts. A district court held that the county violated the Voting Rights Act—it found that the county “extinguished the Black and Latino communities’ voice on its commissioners court,” leaving Black and Latino voters “shut out of the process altogether.” A panel of the Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s factual findings as to vote dilution, but the full court subsequently agreed to rehear the case.

The Fifth Circuit was asked by the county to overturn decades of precedent and hold that, though Black and Latino voters form a geographically compact and politically cohesive group in Galveston County, they could not bring a vote dilution claim together because they are not all the same race. The Constitutional Accountability Center filed an amicus brief explaining why the Fifth Circuit should’ve rejected this argument. Our brief made three principal arguments.

First, the Fifteenth Amendment created an expansive prohibition on all racial discrimination in voting and empowered Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act to protect communities of color from vote dilution. Ratified in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment gave Congress the “power of conferring upon the colored man the full enjoyment of his right” and “enabl[ed] Congress to take every step that might be necessary to secure the colored man in the enjoyment of these rights.” Congress used this sweeping authority to enact the Voting Rights Act of 1965, heralded by the Supreme Court as “the most successful civil rights statute in the history of the Nation.” Recognizing that the right to vote includes “the right to have the vote counted at full value without dilution or discount,” Congress amended Section 2 in 1982 to declare that the political processes in a State must be “equally open,” such that minority voters do not “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.”

Second, the text and history of the Fifteenth Amendment and the Voting Rights Act sweep broadly to protect all communities of color. The Framers of the Fifteenth Amendment understood that future voters of color were at risk of state-sanctioned obstacles to the franchise and chose expansive language to prohibit all voting discrimination “on account of race or color” to ensure that the Amendment was “as complete as possible.” Nearly a century later, Congress mirrored the Fifteenth Amendment’s broad prohibition of race discrimination in voting in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. When Congress amended Section 2 in 1982, Congress expressly based Section 2’s text on Supreme Court cases that embraced the Constitution’s fundamental principle of voting equality for all voters of color, including Black and Latino voters.

Third, when Black and Latino citizens vote as a cohesive bloc, they are a single class of voters protected by the VRA from vote dilution. In amending Section 2, Congress prohibited redistricting schemes that are “not equally open to participation by members of a class of citizens protected” against abridgment of their right to vote “on account of race or color.” At the time Section 2 was amended, a “class” was “a number of people or things grouped together because of certain likenesses.” This language plainly authorizes claims brought by cohesive coalitions of Black and Latino voters like Plaintiffs here, so long as those voters share the experience of having their collective voting strength minimized due to their race. Where, as here, the proof shows that Black and Latino citizens vote as a cohesive bloc, they are a single class of voters protected by Section 2 from vote dilution.

The Fifth Circuit should have rejected the county’s arguments and affirmed the lower court’s decision.

In August 2024, the en banc Fifth Circuit ruled in favor of the county, holding that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act does not permit vote dilution claims brought by coalitions of voters of color. In doing so, the court threw out its decades-old precedent that allowed such claims, concluding that they “do not comport with Section 2’s statutory language or with Supreme Court cases interpreting Section 2.” The court remanded the case back to the district court to resolve the constitutional claims of racial gerrymandering and intentional discrimination.

The principal dissent, joined by five of the six judges that voted against the ruling, echoed our brief, drawing strongly from the history of the Fifteenth Amendment and Section 2 to assert that “the majority reaches an atextual and ahistorical conclusion” that “dismantle[s] the effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act in this circuit, leaving four decades of en banc precedent flattened in its wake.” As the dissent explained, the plain text of Section 2, coupled with the Voting Right Act’s broad remedial purpose of eradicating racial discrimination in voting, plainly permits vote dilution claims brought by coalitions of voters of color.