petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to grant ... - Election Law Blog

11The district court granted summary judgment to theCity. App. 5a-10a. Adhering to Chen, the district court heldthat “the choice between using total population or CVAPshould be left to the legislative body for determination.” Id.8a (citing Chen, 206 F.3d at 525). The district court thusheld that Petitioners had “not demonstrated that, underthese circumstances, the Fifth Circuit would require [it]to intervene in the political process and judicially mandate[the City] to track the size of the districts by CVAP insteadof by [total] population.” Id. 10a; see Chen, 206 F.3d at 505,528 (“In [the] face of the lack of more definitive guidancefrom the Supreme Court, we conclude that this eminentlypolitical question has been left to the political process.”).Petitioners appealed. App. 1a-3a. The United Statesagain filed an amicus brief and requested to participate inoral argument, arguing that “this case raises importantquestions regarding the appropriate population standarda locality should use when drawing its election districts incompliance with the Equal Protection Clause principlesestablished in Reynolds v. Sims.” Amicus Curiae Brief ofthe United States at 3 (May 23, 2011). Although it concededthat “[t]he citizen voting-age population in District 1 issubstantially less than the citizen voting-age populationin the other city council districts in Irving,” id. at 5, theUnited States argued that “the City’s choice to apportionbased on total population rather than citizen voting-agepopulation [was] one properly left to elected officials,” id.at 10. The City and the Intervenors similarly argued thatthe districts created by the Plan did not run afoul of theFourteenth Amendment’s one-person, one-vote principleunder Chen.