The Pacific Legal Foundation is taking the side of the Constitution in the Alabama redistricting case.

Today, PLF filed an amicus curiae brief arguing that the Court should discard the requirement that plaintiffs prove race was the “predominant factor” in redistricting. We argue that the predominant factor standard is inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s repeated holdings that race may not be a factor in any official decisionmaking. Unfortunately, the prevailing law has permitted consideration of race to become legitimate in redistricting debates, so long as it is coupled with “traditional” districting criteria such as contiguity and incumbency protection. This is directly contrary to the Equal Protection Clause’s mandate that government must treat people without respect to race.  Because it is undisputed that Alabama used race at least to comply with Section 5, we argue that the Court should apply strict scrutiny to the redistricting acts.