The reply brief in Davis v. Guam was just filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Maj. Dave Davis is challenging the election (which is restricted by Chamorro ancestry) regarding Guam’s political status. The brief alleges that racial exclusion violates the Voting Rights Act, the 15th Amendment and various federal statutes. The brief can be read here. The introduction: Guam’s “Native Inhabitant” limitation on voting, and its admitted use of the “machinery of the state” to enforce that limitation, is racial discrimination in violation of the Constitution and federal statutory law. The district court wrongly concluded that Mr. Davis suffered no injury when Guam’s Election Commission denied him the right to register to vote in the plebiscite. The defendants repeat the district court’s errors, and compound them by insisting that his challenge would not be ripe even if the plebiscite were held tomorrow. The defendants do not deny that the “Native Inhabitant” classification is synonymous with the Chamorro racial group. Instead, they assert that whether the “Native Inhabitant” classification is a racial one is irrelevant, because Congress can discriminate against U.S. citizens living in unincorporated territories. The racial discrimination at issue here, however, is Guam’s own; it has not been sanctioned by Congress. To the contrary, Congress has expressly extended the Fifteenth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to Guam, and has independently prohibited Guam from engaging in voter discrimination. Guam cannot hide behind Congress. The defendants also attempt to minimize the consequences of their racial discrimination. They insist that Mr. Davis has no claim because the plebiscite—which they assert is simply a tool to determine the desires of the “Native Inhabitants”—has no legal effect. But this Court has squarely held that the right to vote encompasses any election intended to elicit the “official expressions of an elector’s will,” Hussey v. City of Portland, 64 F.3d 1260, 1263 (9th Cir. 1995), which includes the plebiscite at issue here. Moreover, the plebiscite will have an effect—among other things, the law requires Guam’s officials to perform the official act of transmitting the results of the election to Congress and the President. This Court should reverse the district court’s judgment and conclude that Guam’s racially discriminatory plebiscite is invalid.