On November 23, 2022, the plaintiffs in Alonzo v. Schwab filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS). The petition—which asks SCOTUS to hear the case— challenges the Kansas Supreme Court’s May 2022 decision upholding that state’s congressional redistricting plan.
The petitioners allege that the Kansas Supreme Court erroneously ruled “that intentional racial discrimination in redistricting is unconstitutional only if it prevents the formation of a majority-minority district.” The petition also states that “The court did not disagree with the district court’s factual finding, based upon substantial evidence, that the Legislature split Wyandotte County (home to Kansas City) along starkly racial lines in order to eliminate the ability of minority voters to continue electing their preferred candidate; the court simply held that it was irrelevant because those voters were insufficiently numerous to constitute a majority-minority district.”
On June 21, 2022, the Kansas Supreme Court overturned a state district court’s decision that had found that the state’s congressional district boundaries were unconstitutional. The state supreme court’s order said, “The record below demonstrates that plaintiffs did not ask the district court to apply the correct applicable legal tests to their race-based claims. The district court, in turn, did not apply these legal tests to plaintiffs’ race-based claims. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, the district court did not make the requisite fact-findings to satisfy either legal test applicable to plaintiffs’ race-based equal protection claims. Therefore, on the record before us, plaintiffs have failed to satisfy their burden to meet the legal elements required for a showing of unlawful racial gerrymandering or unlawful race-based vote dilution.”
